ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
May 14, 2023 | Bond Bulls Seemed Just as Crazy in 1981
[Editor’s note: The following commentary draws parallels between today’s bond market environment and the last great bear market in bonds, which bottomed in 1981. It went out last month to clients of my friend Doug Behnfield, a financial advisor and senior vice president at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management in Boulder. Long-time followers of Rick’s Picks will be familiar with […]
May 14, 2023 | Fast QT, Fewer Rate Hikes? Bank of Canada Has Shed Nearly Half of Pandemic QE Assets. And QT Continues Despite “Pause” in Rate Hikes
The Bank of Canada, which has paused its rate hikes for the second meeting in a row at 4.5%, isn’t pausing at all its Quantitative Tightening. Au contraire. It seems to follow the policy of faster QT instead of rate hikes. Total assets on the balance sheet today fell to C$365 billion, down by C$210 […]
May 14, 2023 | Plan for Paralysis
This year’s Strategic Investment Conference is wrapped up, but it’s not over. We spent five days thinking the unthinkable. I, for one, will continue not just thinking about it but meditating on it. I believe we got some serious insight into this decade’s fin de siècle. I’ve dubbed it The Great Reset. Others have different […]
May 13, 2023 | Trading Desk Notes For May 13, 2023
Megacap tech continues to provide nearly all the YTD gains for the broad stock indices While small-cap stocks continue to underperform the broad indices and Megacap tech. Bullish stock factors: the recession has been postponed, and strong labour markets mean buying power for consumers, which means pricing power for corporations. We are at or near peak […]
May 13, 2023 | Tech Talk for Saturday May 13th 2023
The Bottom Line Prices for most world equity indices recorded small losses last week, typical of historic technical action early in May after most first quarter reports have been released. Analysts take a closer look at projections for the remainder of the year and adjust their earnings and revenue estimates accordingly. This year, they are […]
May 12, 2023 | Becoming Invisible, Part 1: How They Track Us
In an ideal world, personal information would be more or less private. This includes whom we communicate with and what we say, the location and contents of our financial accounts, our shopping and search habits, and where we are physically at any given time. But this is not an ideal world. Just the opposite, […]
May 12, 2023 | Canadian Banks Must Focus on More Productive Loans
The concentration of economic activity in the residential real estate sector is hurting Canada’s future. Residential real estate investment is not desirable when compared to other activities that generate intellectual property, jobs and increased productivity. Why are Canadians so enthralled with investing in non-productive residential real estate? In a recent article in the Globe and Mail, Dr. […]
May 12, 2023 | Canadian Insolvency Leaping
Pandemic-era debt deferrals, government handouts and easy credit all worked to kick insolvency problems down the road. Now many are out of extend and pretend options. Doug Hoyes, co-founder of Hoyes, Michalos & Associates, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss the record number of consumer proposals in Canada. He says that the upward trend in insolvency […]
May 11, 2023 | The Loudest, Least-Skilled Financial Influencers are Most Followed
A paper from the Swiss Finance Institute‘s working paper series tracked data from more than 29,000 finfluencers on financial social media site StockTwits and came to some predictable conclusions. Those with the least skill tend to be the most followed. The democratization of finance? Not so much; see, Investors flock to loudest, least skilled voices on social […]
May 11, 2023 | 15-Minute Cities – Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)
Let’s take a closer look at Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) that have been proposed for 15-minute cities. These small units are typically under 1,000 sq ft and were once considered secondary structures on an existing residential lot. Think of what we once considered “in-law suites” or guest houses. There are numerous designs for ADUs, but […]
May 11, 2023 | EVs Made the First Visible Dent into Gasoline Consumption
Gasoline consumption in the US dipped by 0.4% in 2022, from 2021, to 369 million gallons per day, all grades of gasoline combined, below where it had been in 2002, and down by 5.7% from 2019, and by 5.9% from the peak in 2018, according to data from the Energy Department’s EIA. And yet, in […]
May 10, 2023 | The Rental Crisis
I reported how BlackRock is now the largest landlord in the US. Institutions have purchased hundreds of billions in real estate across the nation and have no plans to sell because rentals are a lucrative venture. Inventory is at a historic low and people simply cannot find a place to live if they need to […]
May 10, 2023 | Contracting Credit Leads Economy and Equities Lower
Eyes on the recessionary bear prize. Valuable investment opportunities are in the making. Peter Boockvar, Bleakley Financial Group CIO, joins ‘Squawk Box’ to discuss the results from the Fed’s quarterly Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, and why a recession is likely unavoidable. Here is a direct video link. The chart below shows the Senior Loan Officers Survey […]
May 9, 2023 | The 14th Amendment & the Destruction of the United States
Interpretation of the Constitution is often caught up in controversy. What is beautiful to one person is average or ugly to another. The best construction regarding law was the cornerstone of Justice Scalia who I regard as probably one of the most brilliant minds that ever sat on the bench. Of course, the left […]
May 9, 2023 | It Pays to be Big-Picture Aware and Disciplined
Three-quarters of NASDAQ companies have reported Q1 2023 earnings thus far, and the aggregate year-over-year EPS decline is 10.2%. After rebounding 17% year to date, the NASDAQ remains -23.4% from its peak in November 2021, and the average individual brokerage portfolio is down 27% over the same 17 months. Canada’s S&P/TSX Composite is expected to […]
May 9, 2023 | Rise To Rebellion – A Fourth Turning Perspective
“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, […]
May 8, 2023 | The Epic Failure Of Modern Experts
There’s a debate in the comments section here about whether Americans have gotten suddenly dumber, leading them to elect populist presidents and refuse vaccines. I started to weigh in but quickly realized that the story is broader and deeper than just vaccines and Donald Trump. So here’s some context: Starting in the 1960s, the US […]
May 8, 2023 | Powell on Bank Acquisitions
After the FOMC decision, Jerome Powell stated during his Q&A that the Federal Reserve does not have a plan to consolidate banks. “I personally felt that having small, medium, and large were a great part of our banking system,” Powell stated, noting that they all serve different customers. Powell said it could have been a […]
May 8, 2023 | DiMartino Booth on the Fed’s financial demolition
Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and chief strategist at QI Research, returns to Forward Guidance to share her thoughts on May 3rd’s Federal Reserve’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) as well as the ongoing issues at several regional U.S. banks. Here is a direct video link.
May 8, 2023 | Moral Victories
Happy Monday Morning! We get readers of all stripes on this newsletter. Policy makers, bankers, property developers, and every day people trying to figure out what’s going on in the crazy world of Real Estate up north. We’ve hit nearly seven thousand subscribers now which i’m incredibly grateful for. I’m not sure if David Rosenberg […]
May 8, 2023 | Climate Hysteria: Greatest Mistake Since Witches Were Executed for Causing Bad Weather
Yes, during the prolonged starvation and famines caused by the cooling trend during the Little Ice Age learned magistrates burned witches at the stake. In Northern Europe during the 1500s, thousands of innocent women were legally executed. Nowadays, the blame game for “threatening” weather is more democratic, with all women, men and children right down to […]
May 7, 2023 | CBDC – The Real Target
A lot of people somehow think that the move to Digital Currency is a completely new monetary system, It is targeted to eliminate cash transactions so everything is taxable and nothing can be hidden from our overlords. If we look at commerce in the United States during 2022, 82% of all transactions were digital – […]
May 7, 2023 | Why a Permabear Is Certain We’re Going Much Higher (II)
[I’m giving the commentary below a second week on the front page because the thesis is so outrageous even I can scarcely believe it. Stocks screamed higher to end the week, as if everything were right with the world. What lunacy! Investors have truly gone out of their minds. Reportedly, there are 186 U.S. banks on […]
May 7, 2023 | Art Of The Collapse, May 2023
There’s a lot going on out there. But not all of it is bad. The Babylon Bee, for instance, broke some (relatively) good news on Artificial Intelligence: A.I. Calculates It Will Be More Efficient To Just Let Humanity Destroy Itself ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Despite stern warnings of artificial intelligence attacking humanity’s digital infrastructure from the […]
May 7, 2023 | A Rosie Forecast, and More
World economic growth is slowing. That’s so obvious, very few will disagree. I suppose there are people out there predicting imminent 1990s-like expansion, but they are few and far between. If recession begins soon, it will be the most anticipated one in history. This was a prime question at my Strategic Investment Conference, which […]