Danielle Park
Portfolio Manager and President of Venable Park Investment Counsel (www.venablepark.com) Ms Park is a financial analyst, attorney, finance author and regular guest on North American media. She is also the author of the best-selling myth-busting book "Juggling Dynamite: An insider's wisdom on money management, markets and wealth that lasts," and a popular daily financial blog: www.jugglingdynamite.com
September 21st, 2023 | Falling Incomes and Forced Home Sales
Juggling Dynamite - Lucid insights on macro conditions and the housing cycle in this segment. Homeowners in America have run out of money in 2023, which could spark a wave of panic selling that will cause inventory to surge. Here is a direct video link.
September 20th, 2023 | What This $100 Billion Ghost City Says About China’s Realty Crisis
Juggling Dynamite - Country Garden, once seen as one of China’s most stable property developers, is now struggling financially, leaving the future of unfinished megadevelopments like Malaysia’s Forest City in doubt. Here’s how overbuilding, and a streak of bad luck, have left China’s real-estate developers in the red. Here is a direct video link. This entry was posted
September 20th, 2023 | Fed Pause Doesn’t Preclude Future Hikes
HoweStreet.com Radio - Real Estate problems a global phenomena
September 19th, 2023 | BOC: Elevated Investor Ownership Magnifies Real Estate Downside
Juggling Dynamite - In a September 8th update entitled, Indicators of Financial Vulnerabilities, the Bank of Canada (BOC) notes that in Q1 2023, so-called investors owned 30 percent of mortgaged homes in Canada, up from 20 percent before the pandemic. See, Investors took a bigger chunk of the housing market during the pandemic, data shows. In the first quarter […]
September 18th, 2023 | Mind The Credit Cycle
Juggling Dynamite - Bank lending is contracting across world economies. The percentage of US banks tightening their credit to large and medium firms (below since 1990 via Tier 1 Alpha) now above 40%–was only seen during the 2020 pandemic, the 2008 financial crisis, the 2001 Dotcom bust, and the 1990-91 recession. As higher interest rates freeze existing home […]
September 14th, 2023 | Wall Street’s Soft-Landing Delusion and What Really Comes Next!
Juggling Dynamite - For those who like detail, Francois Trahan of Trahan Research offers a cogent macro assessment in his latest video update (1-hour run time): “Wall Street’s Soft-landing Delusion and What Really Comes Next!” You can watch it at this direct video link.
September 13th, 2023 | More and More Hard Data
Juggling Dynamite - Debt payments consume an impossible amount of household income, and the problem is global. Across ten large Canadian cities, mortgage payments alone are eating up about 59% of household earnings, based on mortgages amortized over 25 years. This is with 70% of Canadian mortgages still paying fixed payments based on rates less than 3%. With […]
September 12th, 2023 | Central Banks Offer No Free Lunch
Juggling Dynamite - The San Fransisco Federal Reserve published its latest economic letter last week, entitled Does Monetary Policy Have Long-Run Effects? The conclusions are clear: loose monetary policy does not raise long-run economic potential while the eventual tightening of policy reduces economic output for a decade and beyond. We have entered the payback decade: Analyzing cross-country data for […]
September 11th, 2023 | Rents and Home Prices Heading Down
Juggling Dynamite - Good news: Big Wall Street Investors like Blackrock, Blackstone, Invitation Homes, and Progress Residential are no longer buying up the housing market. As the rental supply balloons, rents are starting to fall. The next leg of housing downturns typically see for-sale listings surge and prices fall. Nick Gerli explains well in his latest video segment. […]
September 8th, 2023 | Pause Before The Storm
Juggling Dynamite - As Greg Ip notes in the Wall Street Journal today: “Every recession starts out looking like a soft landing. August’s moderate increase in unemployment was welcome. The risk is that plenty more are in store, which won’t be cause for celebration.“ In reality, recessions are the norm following monetary tightening cycles, and unemployment rises through contractions […]
September 7th, 2023 | Jeremy Grantham on Risk and Opportunity
Juggling Dynamite - I discovered Jeremy Grantham in 2002, and he’s served as a touchstone since. His experience and insight are rare and valuable. The slow-moving influence of rising interest rates will end up torpedoing the economy, dashing Federal Reserve expectations that a recession can be avoided, according to renowned Wall Street curmudgeon Jeremy Grantham. This interview for “Bloomberg Wealth […]
September 6th, 2023 | Real Estate Has Earned Us a Drubbing
Juggling Dynamite - US mortgage rates (30-year fixed) jumped an extra 50 basis points this week to 7.7%, while Canadian mortgage rates are 6% plus. Higher carrying costs are causing many owners to need to maximize rental income from their properties. Short-term rentals are attractive because they have yielded more per night than long-term leases. However, many cities […]
September 5th, 2023 | Extend and Pretend Has Magnified Economic Shock
Juggling Dynamite - As interest rates soared above six percent over the last seventeen months, four of the big five Canadian banks have allowed floating-rate customers to extend and pretend by making the same mortgage payments as when floating rates were sub-2%. This has compounded solvency problems as unpaid interest adds to the debt and extends amortization periods […]
September 1st, 2023 | Higher Rates Freezing Mobility and Consumption
Juggling Dynamite - About seventy percent of Canadian mortgages were taken out over the last few years with a 5-year fixed term and an ultra-low interest rate that averaged 2.79%. In 2020-2021, some 40% were taken at floating rates that averaged 1.65%. Floating and new fixed-term rates are now above 6%. Eighty-five percent of US home mortgages have […]
August 30th, 2023 | Unaffordable Prices Cure Unaffordable Prices
Juggling Dynamite - Canada’s housing bubble is crystal clear unless you are paid not to see it (wilfully blind) or painfully naive. The average national home price of 754K in July is ten times the average household income of $75k. The historically recognized affordability ratio has been home prices that are 3 to 4 times household income; this […]
August 29th, 2023 | Economic Weakness Leads Unemployment, Not The Other Way Around
Juggling Dynamite - Many cite US and Canadian unemployment levels today near 5o-year lows as grounds for economic optimism. Unemployment is a lagging indicator that commonly inspires misplaced confidence heading into recessions and then pessimism as it rises into subsequent economic expansions. For leading employment indicators, we look to readings on the average manufacturing workweek, average overtime manufacturing […]
August 28th, 2023 | Productivity Challenges
Juggling Dynamite - Weak productivity pressures profits and, ultimately, increases unemployment. Eventually, after recessions, productivity increases, thanks to reviving demand and lower labour costs (after layoffs). So far, we are early in the layoff phase, with jobless claims rising in 48 US states. Similar trends are evident in Canada and many developed economies, not just in America. The […]
August 25th, 2023 | Climate Chaos To Change Thinking Around Housing
Juggling Dynamite - I have been following this issue for some time, and it’s not yet being widely factored into asset allocation decisions. How much of our net worth will we want in buildings that can’t be insured or where premiums go parabolic? How can we reduce and self-insure our risk in a world with hard-to-get or unaffordable […]
August 23rd, 2023 | Historic Opportunities Will Emerge From Building Economic Chaos
HoweStreet.com Radio - The Wave of Unaffordability Just Starting
August 22nd, 2023 | Tougher Times For The Masses
Juggling Dynamite - Today’s home affordability is the lowest on record, thanks to elevated prices and the highest mortgage rates in 23 years (US home affordability index below since 1997 courtesy of Goldman Sachs). Not to mention leaping insurance, utilities, property taxes, maintenance, and interest costs on the many other debt types. These are tough times for the masses. In […]
August 21st, 2023 | Historic Opportunity Now in the Making
Juggling Dynamite - As the riskiest asset prices rebounded into July, most strategists and investment advisers proclaimed the all-clear (as usual), and bullish sentiment roared back near levels seen at the cycle top in early 2021 (shown below courtesy of The Daily Shot). This is typical behaviour: market sentiment moves in lockstep with price. As stocks have […]
August 20th, 2023 | Grantham: Recession “Running Perhaps Deep into Next Year”
Juggling Dynamite - This is a teaser preview of the full interview that has not yet been released. Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of the Boston-based investment firm Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo (GMO), predicts a US recession “running perhaps deep into next year.” Grantham says we have entered a period of “moderately higher inflation.” Grantham speaks in an interview taped […]
August 19th, 2023 | China’s Great Slowdown
Juggling Dynamite - A glut of Chinese homes and goods, with falling domestic consumption, suggests less demand for global commodities and a deflationary impulse through the rest of the world. China’s momentum is fading after decades of supercharged growth. A much anticipated post-pandemic recovery appears to have flopped, with data flashing warning signs across the economy. The government’s […]
August 18th, 2023 | Harsh Credit Cycle Has Broad Impacts
Juggling Dynamite - Historical context is critical in assessing where we are in this credit, business and employment cycle. Facts demand sobriety, and the discussion below is lucid. This overall strength in U.S. equities is painting a misleading picture as to where the global economy is heading, especially with the Chinese market indicating signs of a slowdown, David […]
August 17th, 2023 | Improving and Extending Healthful Years
Juggling Dynamite - I am just reading Attia’s latest book, Outlive, and I appreciate the proactive focus on extending health quality rather than just the number of years lived. The good news is that it’s possible to improve our health and fitness as we age. If you’ve been wanting to invest in your health, you probably have so many questions […]