ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
September 12, 2025 | The Storm Hits The Art Market
The salad days of near-zero interest rates enabled excess demand and price-insensitive buying across most sectors all at once; that included art markets. After a euphoric frenzy peaked in 2022, art prices have been falling since, and a world of feeder sectors and businesses is contracting along for the ride. See, The Storm Hits the Art […]
September 11, 2025 | Understanding The Job Loss Cycle
Backward-looking job revisions show the US and Canadian economies have been producing fewer and fewer jobs amid rising unemployment. Mass layoffs are due next. EPB Macro’s Eric Basmajian explains in the segments below. This video analyzes why elevated profit margins are giving businesses more room and time to absorb slowing economic conditions without resorting to […]
September 10, 2025 | Investor Exodus Accelerating Real Estate Downturn
Statistics Canada housing data shows that, in 2021, across the provinces, 15–27% of houses were owned as an investment/secondary property (i.e., not an owner’s primary residence)—with PEI 27%, Nova Scotia 20%, Ontario/Manitoba/New Brunswick/B.C. generally in the mid-teens. Condos skewed higher, with 30–42% of condo apartments owned as secondary properties in the provinces studied. (Perspectives Journal). In related […]
September 8, 2025 | Ontario Real Estate Update
The Toronto area saw the average home price drop for the seventh consecutive year-over-year decline in August. Detached home prices, down 10%, fell more than other property types. The average sales price for all property types has dropped by more than 23 per cent in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) since the February 2022 price […]
September 4, 2025 | Danielle on Thoughtful Money
After a year of projecting confidence in America’s “strong” and “resilient” economy, at his recent Jackson Hole appearance, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suddenly changed his tune. He expressed concern about the deteriorating labor market, saying the situation may warrant a resumption of monetary easing notwithstanding the potential inflationary risks of tariffs. This comes at […]
September 3, 2025 | Bipartisan Congress Members Hold Briefing on Bill to Stop Stock Trading in Legislature
It is wild and indefensible that insider trading by politicians remains rampant. Conflicts of interest queer policy and undermine faith and trust in institutions. And yet, will efforts to ban it ever get passed? Reasonable people hope. Here is a direct video link.
September 2, 2025 | Canada’s Eonomy Disappoints
Canada’s GDP for the second quarter contracted by 1.6% on an annualized basis, following a downwardly revised 2.0% expansion in the first quarter (Statistics Canada), resulting in a total annualized growth of 0.4% for the first six months of 2025. The weakness was in line with Bank of Canada forecasts but significantly worse than the […]
September 1, 2025 | Danielle on The Disciplined Investor Podcast
Markets react to the chance of a rate cut. Summertime lull was anything but boring. September and October await – two of the seasonally worst months for markets. And our guest – Danielle Park, Venable Park Investment Counsel Inc.
August 28, 2025 | Government and Central Bank Housing ‘Help’ Has Made a Mess
I have said for some time that the housing bubble and now bust is the dominant economic challenge at hand, with broader financial impacts than trade tariffs. Industry participants are starting to agree. Toronto-area new home sales marked the worst July on record, “eclipsing” the 1990s housing downturn, according to a report yesterday from the […]
August 27, 2025 | TM: The Fed Now Fears Recession
Worthwhile overview in this discussion. Suddenly, the Federal Reserve is filled with more drama and curveballs than a World Series tiebreaker. The betting markets are abuzz debating who President Trump will replace current Chair Jerome Powell with. A surprise resignation from Fed governor and FOMC voting member Adriana Kugler has added Trump loyalist Stephen Mirran […]
August 26, 2025 | Weak Job Market Warning
It now takes the average US worker 24 weeks to find a job after losing one, nearly a month longer than a year ago, according to federal data. The hire rate—the number of hires as a share of overall U.S. employment—was just 3.3% in June, according to the Labour Department; below the 3.9% level in […]
August 24, 2025 | Danielle on CBC Weekend Business Panel
Here is a direct video link.
August 22, 2025 | AI Over-Exuberance Comparable To 2000 Internet-Inspired Bubble
A new MIT report concludes that 95% of generative artificial intelligence (AI) pilots are failing to translate into revenue growth: The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, a new report published by MIT’s NANDA initiative, reveals that while generative AI holds promise for enterprises, most initiatives to drive rapid revenue growth are falling flat. Despite the rush to […]
August 21, 2025 | Pump and Dump Scams Are All The Rage (encore)
More cautionary signs of mania behaviour in financial markets, see “Investors lose billions on meme stocks as ‘pump and dump’ scams multiply“: Investors lost billions of dollars in July betting on a handful of small US-listed Chinese stocks that plunged in value shortly after being heavily promoted on social media. Seven Nasdaq-listed microcap stocks — Concorde […]
August 20, 2025 | Housing Demand at 30-Year Low
US homebuyer demand dropped again in June 2025 – with contract signings for houses declining 2.8% year-over-year to one of the lowest levels on record. At this point, homebuyer interest in the market is even lower than what was experienced in the depths of the 2008 housing crash. The question is: will we see a […]
August 19, 2025 | Self-Dealing Allows PE To Keep Marking Asset Values To Fantasy
As new outside investors become increasingly difficult to find, private equity firms are finding that often the best firm to sell their companies to is…themselves. Yep, you read that right. Private equity firms are increasingly keeping themselves afloat, extracting cash and boosting their fees through self-sold transactions. See: PEs Sell Firms to Themselves Twice Over to […]
August 18, 2025 | Would-Be-Sellers Dwarf Buyers in Many Markets
The housing unaffordability crisis is not just about current interest rates, which are historically average (4.71% 5-year fixed in Canada and 6.57% 30-year fixed in America). Homebuilders are already offering buy-down rates in the 3 percent range in the US and Canada. Still, new home sales have contracted year over year, while the inventory of […]
August 14, 2025 | Real Estate Downturn Picking up Steam
If we had a dime for all the times people say silly things, like “You’ll never lose money in real estate” or “high-end properties always hold their value.” Not true, never has been. The current real estate correction cycle is well-earned after years of easy money speculation and uneconomically high prices. Three years into the […]
August 13, 2025 | All’s Well That Ends Well
Margin debt (people borrowing against their security portfolios) has now topped $1 trillion for the first time in history, +25% over the past year alone. Other, lesser, margin-abuse peaks occurred before major bear markets/recessions (grey bars below) since 1995, courtesy of Rosenberg Research. Among professionals, dry powder is also in short supply. Trend-chasing portfolio manglers managers are all […]
August 11, 2025 | Housing Downturn is Bigger Economic Story Than Tariffs
As policymakers focus on tariffs, bursting real estate bubbles pose a significantly larger threat in terms of relative economic impact, and that’s now happening in several major economies simultaneously. Homes are the foundation of the household balance sheet and assets in the banking system. A 2025 Bank of Montreal report, “A Long Way Home”, concurs with our […]
August 7, 2025 | Liberation Day 2.0?
Last night at midnight, goods from more than 60 countries and the European Union became subject to tariff rates of 10% or higher. Products from the EU, Japan and South Korea are taxed at 15%, while imports from Taiwan, Vietnam and Bangladesh are taxed at 20%. See the full list of U.S tariffs in place around […]
August 5, 2025 | Collapse in Job Creation
Canada’s seasonally adjusted job vacancy rate fell to 2.7% in May, down 10 basis points (bps) from April and -50 bps year over year, reaching an 8-year low, significantly below pre-pandemic levels (red shown below since 2015, courtesy of BMO and Better Dwelling.com, with the US job opening rate in blue). Official unemployment rates are lagging indicators, […]
July 31, 2025 | Consumers Under Pressure Across The Spectrum
As the US and Canadian central banks declined to offer monetary easing yesterday, consumer confidence measures are already below the levels recorded in the past nine recessions, including the periods surrounding 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and the 2020 pandemic. A raft of recent data shows households under increasing financial stress across all income levels. […]
July 29, 2025 | Financial Sobriety is a Rare Superpower Over Time
Speculative trading indicators measure froth in financial markets and indicate when speculators—rather than fundamental investors—are dominating market behavior. As shown below, since 1995, the rebound in speculative measures over the past three months has been one of the sharpest on record, and in rare company with now infamous bubble tops in 1999-2000 and 2021. The […]
July 28, 2025 | Hoisington Q2 2025 Review and Outlook
Hoisington Management’s 2025 Second Quarter Review and Outlook is available here. At his June 18 press conference, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell referred to tariffs as inflationary. Hoisington points out that this is only the first-round effect: Second, third, and later-round effects also come into play, causing the quantity demanded and price to decrease for the […]