ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
September 21, 2024 | Tech Talk for Saturday September 21st 2024
The Bottom Line All-time highs were recorded by the S&P 500 and TSX Composite Index following the FOMC’s decision to lower its Fed Fund Rate by 0.50%. Positive technical action following the decision contributed to strength. “Risk on” sectors (technology, materials, industrials and Consumer Discretionary) led the advance. History calls for a volatile/mixed trend for […]
September 20, 2024 | EU Parliament Issuing a Virtual Declaration of War on Russia
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution calling on EU countries to lift all restrictions on Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia immediately. The US has just issued warnings to Americans on their travel advisory. They now warn Americans to be cautious about traveling to popular European destinations like Italy and the United Kingdom. You should […]
September 20, 2024 | A Close Call Between Recession and a New Bubble
On Wednesday September 18, 2024, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut 50 basis points off its benchmark rate, making the first move to lower rates in four years. History shows that economic cycles and stock market outcomes after the first cut are divided. Either this is the start of a deep recession and a stock market […]
September 20, 2024 | Art of the Collapse, October 2024
This series is monthly, which means the next one was scheduled to drop on October 1. But the first 19 days of September have produced so much absurdity that we have to go a little early this time around to avoid being swamped. Let’s start with a tip o’ the hat to those alarmists who […]
September 19, 2024 | Global Chaos, Part 1: Things Exploding Everywhere
Not so long ago, the coming financial crisis looked more or less manageable. Currencies would plunge, inflation would spike, the monetary system would be reset, and something resembling normal life would return (though of course with gold bugs as the new financial elites). Then the past few years happened, and now what’s coming looks a […]
September 19, 2024 | WTI Crude Bottom Is In Place But May Test Those Lows Over The Coming Weeks. BUY Energy Stocks When This Test Occurs
Fed day and then the Chairman’s press conference saw the announcement of an aggressive 50 BP decline in the Fed Funds rate to a range of 4.75 – 5.00%. This cut was hoped for by the markets so investors rejoiced and lifted the Dow by 125 points. We wonder if the Fed is seeing some […]
September 19, 2024 | Dodging Bullets vs Dodging Interviews
While this joke has been circulating around, sad to say, it is true. The debate was clearly rigged and Kamala came off articulate and not the typical random reasoning that leaves you wonder what the hell is she talking about. This is a clip from overseas dated August 4th, and they said there that […]
September 18, 2024 | Supplemental Poverty Measure on the Rise
The latest Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) found that at 12.9% of American households currently rely on government assistance, up from 12.4% one year prior. The figure was at 11.8% in 2019 and has risen every year under Biden-Harris. The data only factors in US households and not the tens of millions of illegal aliens […]
September 18, 2024 | Fed Cuts Unlikely to Prevent Spreading Strife
Rising unemployment has overtaken inflation as the dominant fear, and today is expected to bring the Fed’s first rate cut of a new easing cycle. Like Pavlovian dogs, stocks typically rally in anticipation of Fed easing. However, unemployment continued to surge in the eight recessions since 1969, and stock markets eventually fell an average of […]
September 17, 2024 | Countries Grow Weary of United Nations
The majority has always accepted the United Nations as a world governing force. Sentiment may be changing according to a new Pew Research Center survey that found support for this global conglomerate waning across the globe. Of the 35 countries surveyed, 58% still have positive sentiments about the organization, but 31% see it as […]
September 17, 2024 | Gundlach’s September Macro Outlook
In his webcast titled “1984” in remembrance of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, DoubleLine Founder and CEO Jeffrey Gundlach on Sept. 10, 2024, dives “into the subject of the Fed and some of the variables that will likely underpin their logic and their thinking” at the Sept. 18 meeting of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee […]
September 16, 2024 | Geologic Hydrogen – the Next Gold Rush?
Around 96% of hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, with around 1% derived from renewable sources. Global demand for hydrogen is on the rise and will increase to 95 million tonnes by 2022. As over 150+ nations have committed to reducing green policies, hydrogen production has been met with challenges and uncertainty, which is […]
September 16, 2024 | Connecting the Dots
Happy Monday Morning! Today we’re going to play a game of connect the dots. As we already know, the resale condo market is weak, particularly in Vancouver and Toronto. Rates went up a lot, basically destroying the math behind owning rental properties in these two cities. Condo investors are suddenly faced with rising mortgage payments, […]
September 16, 2024 | Koo: China’s Balance Sheet Recession
Once real estate bubbles bust, prices typically fall for years, and paying down debt becomes the priority. In the process, slashing interest rates does not entice the hoped-for revival of borrowing, and it takes years to rebuild balance sheets. This is now underway in the world’s second-largest economy. Et tu, Canada? Richard Koo, senior adviser […]
September 15, 2024 | The ‘Wealth Effect’ Is a Delusion and a Fraud
The so-called ‘wealth effect’ is the Tulipmania of this era on steroids, creating untold sums of money from speculative spume. If materializing vast quantities of spendable cash is the goal, a revved-up wealth effect makes the Fed Open Market Committee look like a ladies’ luncheon club. Indeed, it can take long months or even years […]
September 15, 2024 | The Revolt of the Public
“All over the world, elite institutions from governments to media to academia are losing their authority and monopoly control of information to dynamic amateurs and the broader public. This book, until now only in samizdat (and Kindle) form, has been my No. 1 handout for the last several years to anyone seeking to understand this […]
September 15, 2024 | Finally, Gold/Silver Miners Outperform the Metals
Normally, when gold and silver are rising, it’s a good idea to buy the related mining stocks on the assumption that they’ll go up even more than the metals. That’s why mining stocks are frequently referred to as “leveraged plays on the price of the underlying commodity.” But for most of the current gold bull […]
September 15, 2024 | Migrants & Historical Plagues
COMMENT: I am an RN, and I travel around the country. All over the US, we started to see upticks in diseases the US hadn’t seen in decades when Obama brought the Somalians introducing polio, but that never made the news. Then, in the Western US, we have seen TB, AIDS, whooping cough, and […]
September 14, 2024 | Trading Desk Notes for September 14, 2024
The S&P had its best week of the year this week; last week, it had its worst week in 18 months. Do you want to bet on next week? The S&P fell ~4% last week and bounced back ~4% this week. The S&P ended last week right on its lows. It rallied back on Monday […]
September 14, 2024 | IEA: Global Oil Demand “Slowing Sharply”
Global oil demand growth is “slowing sharply” as China’s economy cools, pushing prices to a three-year low, the International Energy Agency said. World consumption increased by 800,000 barrels a day in the first half of the year, barely a third of the expansion in the same period of 2023, the adviser to major economies said […]
September 14, 2024 | Tech Talk for Saturday September 14th 2024
The Bottom Line Focus this week is on the FOMC’s economic statement released on Wednesday at 2:00 PM EDT. Consensus calls for a 0.25% reduction in the Fed Fund Rate to 5.25%. Consensus for Earnings and Revenues for S&P 500 companies Source: www.factset.com A word of caution! Consensus for third quarter results calls for significantly […]
September 13, 2024 | China Property Meltdown
China continues to experience a significant collapse in its property sector, which is weighing heavily on Chinese families. Numerous attempts at stimulating the sector have failed. When will China’s property sector start to recover? There is a view suggesting that Beijing has lost control of the property market, which could be very damaging to the […]
September 13, 2024 | Chinese Bust Cycle is Contagious
From 2019 to 2022, rounds of “free” money courtesy of central banks and governments fuelled gullibility and blind risk-taking in many countries. The effects were particularly short-lived in China, the world’s second-largest economy, where consumer confidence has been moribund over the past three years (below since 2016). Hampered by relatively low household incomes and […]
September 12, 2024 | Biden’s Attempt to Restrain the Supreme Court Warns the End is Near
This partisan part-time political hack we call President Biden has had the blatant gall to call for term limits on Justices of the Supreme Court only because the Democrats want the Court to rule as they see fit – not according to the Constitution. In HARRIS v. McRAE, 448 U.S. 297 (1980), a pregnant woman […]
September 12, 2024 | Lacy Hunt Economic Update
Ted Oakley interviews Dr. Lacy Hunt regarding the U.S. economy, world economy, Federal Reserve, and interest rates. Here is a direct video link. Meanwhile, the effective corporate tax rate for large S&P 500 companies is at a multi-decade low of less than 20 percent (shown below since 1985). Sustainable?