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January 23, 2025 | Loonie Dives to 22-Year Low
Canada’s loonie (CAD) traded at .6939 U.S. this morning, the lowest since January 2003. Part of the weakness comes from the Canadian overnight rate at 3.25%, which is expected to be cut to 3% on January 29, 133 basis points (bps) below the current U.S. effective funds rate at 4.33%. Foreign capital flows where it’s […]
January 22, 2025 | Trump Astride Most Over-Valued Stock Market
President Trump comes back to office amid one of the most over-valued stock markets of all time, even more inflated than at President Hoover’s inauguration months before the Black Tuesday crash of 1929. See WSJ: Make America Cheap Again. The CAPE is just one of a long list of historically prescient indicators ringing alarm bells. Of […]
January 21, 2025 | DoubleLine Round Table 2025
More moving parts than usual in 2025…For a few new ones, see Everything to Know about Trump’s Use of Executive Orders. The discussion below further elucidates. During the macroeconomic segment of Round Table Prime’s 2025 edition, participants, among other issues, deliberate the future path of inflation, premature Trump administration assumptions at the Federal Reserve, the hidden but […]
January 20, 2025 | Balance Sheet Recessions Take Years To Repair
The winds of change are blowing around the globe. 74 countries representing half of the world’s population held national elections last year. Many of them — including the US — saw a replacement of the ruling incumbent by the opposition, often one promising a more nationalistic agenda. With so many new leaders and their accompanying […]
January 16, 2025 | When will People Stop Moving to the Riskiest Areas?
For the last 50 years, Americans have flocked to the warm, sunny South. But, as climate change makes extreme heat, hurricanes, wildfire and flooding worse, will that trend ever STOP? Well, some regions might just be showing signs of a reversal, and they hold lessons for what other areas might expect as the world continues […]
January 15, 2025 | Rethinking Risk-Exposure
The Great Fire of London in 1666 prompted the creation of the first fire insurance companies, which later evolved into broader property insurance. Home insurance became more widespread in the 19th century, particularly in the United States and Europe, as urbanization and industrialization increased. The Hartford Fire Insurance Company began offering policies in the U.S. […]
January 14, 2025 | Surprise: Financial Conditions Tightening into 2025
While the U.S. Federal Reserve cut overnight rates by 125 basis points since November 2023 (below on the lower right), the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield has risen more than a percentage point, touching 4.8% for the first time since October 2023 (on the lower left) and April 2007 before that. Higher rates are the opposite […]
January 13, 2025 | How Canadian Prime Ministers Stepped Down Over The Years
History offers valuable perspective on human systems and cycles. Political leadership is easy to criticize and hard to do. Pendulums swing, and so it goes. Revisit decades past in Canadian politics as prime ministers came and went and oversight of the country changed hands. Here is a direct video link.
January 9, 2025 | Risk-Blind Bets Are All The Rage
Risk complacency is evident in exuberantly priced assets. Stocks do not provide contractually prescribed interest payments or a return of principal date. Some pay dividends, but these are always at the discretion of corporate management and can and should be cut when a company’s financial circumstances warrant it. When a company becomes insolvent, creditors and […]
January 8, 2025 | The Biggest Global Risks for 2025
Many moving parts are pulling in opposite directions. This discussion highlights some big ones. 2025 ushers in one of the most dangerous periods in world history — on par with the 1930s and early Cold War, says Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. Highlighting the top geopolitical risks for the […]
January 7, 2025 | Different Countries Similar Challenges
Canada’s unemployment rate rose to 6.9% in December, now up 210 basis points (bps) from the 4.8% low in June 2022 (below in blue). The U.S. unemployment rate, at 4.2%, has risen 80 bps since it bottomed in April 2023. There has never been a time when unemployment has increased this much outside of recessions.Moreover, […]
January 6, 2025 | Unaffordable Home Prices Weigh
Asset bubbles create unproductive debt and uneconomic pricing, which magnifies financial trauma as prices reverse. Most Canadians now live in cities where the average home price is five to twelve times the average household income (shown below, courtesy of WOWA.ca). The long-term ‘affordable’ norm was three times, max. This reality increases financial vulnerability for households, […]
January 3, 2025 | Why are China’s Youth Boycotting Pensions?
A massive population followed by 36 years of a one-child policy (1980 to 2016) magnified the demographic strains building in China. Still, similar generational flashpoints are growing in most developed countries today. Compromise, fresh thinking and more efficiency/less waste are necessary. China’s pension system is in danger of running out of money in a decade. […]
December 31, 2024 | Home Builders Report Biggest Spike in Unsold Homes in a Decade
Home builders across America like Lennar and DR Horton are issuing massive warnings about the US Housing Market in 2025. Most recently, Lennar signaled a big decline in revenue YoY and a huge pile-up of homes for sale. Housing markets like Florida, Texas, and Arizona are most in the cross-hairs of this home-builder downturn. Access […]
December 24, 2024 | Grantham on the Baby Bust
It is no secret that population dynamics significantly impact global stability. But what’s really behind today’s shifting global birth trends, the increased need for medically-assisted pregnancy, and the changing age demographics of industrialized nations? Furthermore, what are the implications of these shifts for future economic security? Today, Nate is joined by investment strategist Jeremy Grantham […]
December 20, 2024 | Fed’s Frayed Nerves Amid Inflation Fears and Rising Unemployment
There are many clear-eyed insights in this segment. Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and chief strategist of QI Research and former Federal Reserve insider, joins the Julia La Roche Show for an in-person interview to discuss why she sees “frayed nerves” at the Federal Reserve about the incoming Trump administration. In this wide-ranging conversation, DiMartino Booth […]
December 19, 2024 | TM: Bubbles End Badly
As 2024 draws to a close, the mood on Wall Street is very jolly. Stocks are back to trading near all-time highs. Positive sentiment — be it among investors, businesses or consumers — is suddenly spiking. Is such exuberance merited? Should we expect the market’s good times to continue rolling in 2025? Or, is the […]
December 18, 2024 | Yields and the Loonie Dive While Stock Markets Levitate
Canada’s economy is slumping, along with support for the federal government. So far, the Bank of Canada says it plans to ease policy rates at a slower pace in 2025. The Treasury market is not convinced. Through fits and starts, government bond prices have continued to rise on safety-seeking inflows (yields in a downtrend). The […]
December 17, 2024 | Balance Sheet Repair Takes Years
Today on the Jay Martin Show, Jay sits down with Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO of QI Intelligence and author of Fed Up. the pair dissect critical economic and geopolitical trends shaping today’s markets. They explore the historic overvaluation of the stock market, rising consumer debt, and the hidden vulnerabilities in the gig economy. Danielle offers […]
December 16, 2024 | Optimists Say Don’t Worry About Bubbles, That’s Bad Advice
A house on our street recently sold for $8 million to a buyer in his early 40s. Our mutual tradesperson had the scoop: the guy made his money in Bitcoin. This is his summer house; he lives in Hawaii. On closing, he installed lifts in the garage, stacked them with exotic cars, and put a […]
December 12, 2024 | Human Nature is Prone to Self-Harm in Financial Bubbles
Twenty-four years ago, I was studying to become a financial analyst while working at a stock brokerage. Equity markets and animal spirits were soaring; the Nasdaq doubled in 1999 alone. Nortel was Canada’s pride and joy, accounting for over a third of Canada’s TSX stock index. In September 2000, Nortel was trading at C$124 a […]
December 11, 2024 | Florida’s ‘Condo Cliff’
I regularly hear about people thinking of selling their Florida real estate due to escalating costs. An aged population increasingly feels the same way, and the weak loonie is a final catalyst for many Canadians. Who will be willing to buy from all those looking to sell? After the deadly Florida condominium collapse in Surfside […]
December 10, 2024 | Market Snakes Follow Ladders
Canada’s Venture Composite Index (a basket of economically sensitive micro-cap companies, 44% weighted in materials, 30% information technology, 15.74% in energy, 3.5% health care, 2.48% financials, 1.85% industrials, .58% communication services, and .32% consumer discretionary) appears to concur with former BoC head Stephen Poloz’s recessionary assessment. When the real economy expands, rising demand for commodities […]
December 9, 2024 | Cash Crunch Set to Intensify in 2025
Some 1.2 million Canadian mortgages are set to renew in 2025. In 2021, those taken out with 3—to 5-year terms had an average interest rate of 2.05%. Today, even after 125 basis points of overnight rate cuts from the Bank of Canada, the average fixed rate on offer with a 20% downpayment is 4.39 to […]
December 8, 2024 | Is Trump Right about the Canadian Border? | About That
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and his incoming border czar claim their country’s northern border with Canada is a threat to national security. Andrew Chang breaks down the basis of the claims about drugs and illegal migrants streaming into the country from Canada, and to what extent they’re true. Here is a direct video link.