ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
November 9, 2024 | Tech Talk for Saturday November 9th 2024
The Bottom Line All-time highs were recorded by broadly based U.S. equity indices following the election of Donald Trump as President. On Friday, the S&P 500 Index exceeded the 6,000 level and the Dow Jones Industrial Average exceeded 44,000. U.S. equity index futures are tracking their historic seasonal pattern following a U.S. Presidential election once […]
November 8, 2024 | Superhot Rock Energy Provides Unlimited Power
One of the hottest new technologies for production of heat and electricity is found deep underground. With ground-source heat pumps there is a year-round reservoir of constant temperature air just a few meters below the surface. This air is the same as the average temperature above ground. Heat pumps are useful for cooling in the […]
November 8, 2024 | Great Expectations are Priced for Disappointment
The fourth year of a presidential cycle is all about promising. The first year of a presidential cycle is about trying to deliver on all the promises. At the start of President Trump’s last term in 2017, the U.S. government deficit to GDP was 3% versus 6% today. The federal debt as a percentage of […]
November 7, 2024 | World Bank Missing $41 Billion in Climate Funds
A new report by Oxfam, “Climate Finance Unchecked,” has determined that the World Bank has $41 billion in unaccounted funds that were destined to fight climate change. This figure represents 40% of all disbursed climate funds by the World Bank. Oxfam’s audit revealed that between 2017 and 2023, between $24 billion and $41 billion simply went unaccounted […]
November 7, 2024 | US & China Energy Consumption Falls. We See WTI Declining Below US$68/b In The Coming Weeks
The Fed meeting ended today and the expected 25 BP cut was announced. I would keep an eye on the 10-year US Treasury now at 4.43%. It was down to 3.60% in mid-September. The high for 2024 has been 4.74% in April. If we exceed 4.74% then the Fed may be boxed in from further […]
November 6, 2024 | Fluoride – Is America’s Drinking Water Safe?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may now Make America Healthy Again. One of his first measures will be removing “an industrial waste product” from America’s water supply that has been deliberately added since 1945. On January 25, 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, began water fluoridation. By 1960, water fluoridation had reached 50 million households and doubled to […]
November 6, 2024 | These Two Things Don’t Go Together Which one wins?
The election is over, and the result is pretty close to a best-case scenario. The victory margin is big enough to head off the expected civil unrest, giving us a more-or-less peaceful transfer of power. And if Trump and his team keep their promises, they’ll quickly address the existential threats of global war and mass […]
November 6, 2024 | Rates Back Up More
It looks like the U.S. election is yielding a decisive verdict, and that’s good news. Risky assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies are up sharply on the promise of less regulation and further tax cuts from a Republican-led government. In less bullish news, the Treasury market continues to sell off, with a rate backup that began […]
November 5, 2024 | Vanishing Internet Archives
Internet censorship tactics are happening on a grand scale in secrecy. The establishment is scrubbing internet achieves across numerous platforms in an attempt to reframe public opinion and ultimately rewrite history. Archive.org has been tracking websites since 1994, but recently, it has stopped collecting data in real-time. The website stopped archiving on October 8, 2024, […]
November 5, 2024 | Health Prepping: A Legit Anti-Cancer Diet?
There are a million diets out there, most of which are simply common sense combined with one marketable hook (grapefruit, red meat, etc). But one — the Ketogenic diet — just got some intriguing scientific backing. From today’s Epoch Times: Researchers Discover New Mechanism Linking Diet and Cancer Risk Epoch Times, November 3, 2024 MGO, a glucose […]
November 5, 2024 | Home Listings Rise as Pandemic-Era Mortgages Approach Renewal
A new CMHC report notes that 1.2 million mortgages are up for renewal in 2025 and 980,000 in 2026. About 85% have fixed rates contracted when mortgage rates were below 2% compared with over 4% today. Although the Bank of Canada has lowered its base rate from 5 to 3.75% since June, Canadian fixed-term loan […]
November 4, 2024 | Recession Watch: Interest Rates Spike, Warren Buffett Sells
Higher For Longer (than expected) When the Fed started cutting interest rates in September, the assumption was that rates would fall and the Fed would maintain the downward trajectory well into 2025. But interest rates didn’t cooperate. Across the yield curve, days like this one (November 2) have become the norm. A rising 10-year […]
November 4, 2024 | Pigs at the Trough
Happy Monday Morning! We do our best to steer clear of politics in this newsletter. However, housing is political. Housing is impacted by all levels of government, from the federal government at the top, the provincial government in the middle, and all the way down to your municipal council member. Our housing crisis is largely […]
November 4, 2024 | Our Fragile Infrastructure: Lessons From Hurricane Helene
Asheville, North Carolina is known for its historic architecture, vibrant arts scene and as a gateway to the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a favorite escape for “climate migrants” moving from California, Arizona, and other climate-challenged vicinities, until a “500 year flood” ravaged the city this fall. Hurricane Helene was a wakeup call not just […]
November 3, 2024 | Home Sales Reach 14-Year Low in the US
The home buying frenzy seen during the pandemic years has ended. We are no longer in a seller’s market as the tides have shifted. The National Association of Realtors reported that home sales in the US slowed to a 14-year low this September. Sales declined 3.5% on an annual basis. Existing homes declined 1% on a […]
November 3, 2024 | A Canny Silver Bull Trades Ingots for T-Bonds
[The author of this week’s commentary is an old friend who worked his way up from exchange-floor clerk to commercial real estate mogul over the time I’ve known him. He has demonstrated remarkable timing, courage and patience as an investor, buying commercial real estate at the bottom of the 2007-08 crash and holding it until […]
November 3, 2024 | One-Way Road to Crisis
Anyone else ready for the election to be over? This uncertainty is exhausting, no matter how you want it to end. But sadly, it won’t really end. We will just transition to a different uncertainty over what will happen next. I will offer my thoughts on the election at the end of this letter, after […]
November 2, 2024 | Trading Desk Notes for November 2, 2024
Bond yields have risen sharply since the Fed cut short rates on September 18. When the Fed cut rates in September, the 10-year yield was ~3.6%, an 18-month low. It was ~80 bps higher at 4.4% at Friday’s close. In October 2023, the yield was ~5%, a 16-year high. In this daily chart of the 10-year […]
November 2, 2024 | Trump Wins, Eliminates Federal Income Tax, Economy Booms – This is Important
Link to Interview. This was the Tax Reform Proposal for Congress in 1996. It set the stage for the abolishment of the Income Tax, the introduction of the Consumption Tax, and the restoration of the tax system prior to Marxism. The proposal in its entirety is provided here in PDF format, Parts 1 to […]
November 2, 2024 | Becoming Invisible, Part 15: Don’t Let Roomba See You Hide Your Gold
Yes, your new car tracks your location and records your conversations. Your smart speaker listens to and records your conversations. Your TV watches you while you watch it. Virtually every new device we install in our increasingly high-tech homes collects data and (at least potentially) sends it to criminals, corporations, and/or governments to use however they like. […]
November 2, 2024 | Tech Talk for Saturday November 2nd 2024
The Bottom Line Focus this week is on results from the U.S. election on November 5th. Consensus calls for a “dead heat” for election of the President and the House of Representative and a narrow win by the Republicans for the Senate. Chances are high that final results will not be determined this week. Multiple […]
November 1, 2024 | Britain in An Unprecedented Economic Decline into 2026
Aside from the collapse in Starmer’s popularity, he has confirmed our forecast for Britain. The left never saw someone they did not want to shake down for money. In the US, we have Trump talking about eliminating the income tax, which I worked on during the Nineties and even testified on taxation before the […]
November 1, 2024 | The Great Mortgage Reset in Canada will Hit Hard
Canadian policy makers are worried about potential weakness in the economy due to higher interest rates. One of the biggest challenges facing Canadians is the increase in monthly payments that comes with higher rates. Although there have been four Bank of Canada rate cuts this year, mortgage rates have not come down as much as […]
October 31, 2024 | Will the Next Pandemic Come Before World War III?
The US, Mexico, and Canada are developing a cohesive framework to prepare for the next pandemic. The North American Preparedness for Animal and Human Pandemics Initiative (NAPAHPI) “recognizes that the high degree of interconnectedness among our three countries of our critical infrastructure, supply chains, and societies means that disruptions affecting one country often impact the others.” […]
October 31, 2024 | Fourth Turning Election Igniting A Firestorm
“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All […]