ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
August 8, 2022 | No New Couches
As discussed last week, our early indicators pointed to Greater Vancouver home sales falling to a 22 year low in home sales for July. The Real Estate board has officially confirmed the precipitous decline. July sales were also 35% below the ten year average, and the typical price of a home is now down 4.5% […]
August 7, 2022 | Thoughts on ‘The Drive’
[The following went out last month to clients of my friend Doug Behnfield, a wealth management advisor and senior vice president at Morgan Stanley in Boulder CO. Like your editor, he is skeptical that consumer inflation can persist for long with the U.S. economy in recession and a bear market in progress. Deflation is coming, he […]
August 7, 2022 | American Household Debt Surpasses $16 Trillion
American household has reached a new high, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Total household debt has surpassed $16 trillion for the first time in American history. Americans have taken on $2 trillion in additional debt since the pandemic. Aggregate household debt balances rose by $312 billion in Q2 […]
August 7, 2022 | Weirdness Factors
It’s a recession! No, not yet! I see these arguments everywhere and I’m already tired of them. For those who believe it is not yet a recession, I will make a deal with you. The third quarter is likely to be negative. When we have three quarters of a recession in a row, just give […]
August 6, 2022 | Trading Desk Notes For August 6, 2022
Markets that don’t fall on “bad” news probably go higher My macro bias over the past few weeks has been that inflation would stay higher for longer than markets were pricing. I thought stock indices were in a bear market rally, based on the notion that Peak Fed had come and gone with the June […]
August 5, 2022 | The Official Recession Label Will Come Much Too Late To Be Useful
The probability of recession in the U.S. is high. The popular definition of recession — two consecutive quarters of negative growth — has already occurred. But there is no official declaration of recession, yet. Why the delay in calling a recession? Some people argue that a U.S. recession has started. The test of two consecutive […]
August 5, 2022 | Auto Bubble Deflating
Ultra-easy credit conditions in 2020-21 conditioned many to think that prices–from vehicles to homes, consumer goods, crypto, stocks, junk debt, et al.–only go up. Painful lessons are the natural aftermath of such misguided thinking. In the July University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey, 15% of respondents said that interest rates were now impeding their ability […]
August 5, 2022 | Recession Mongers Shocked & Horrified by this Surge in Employment
It wasn’t the hottest growth in jobs ever, but it was big and exceeded the pre-pandemic average job growth. Employers added 528,000 workers to their payrolls in July, and 2.79 million over the past three months. Wages jumped, but less than raging inflation, and the number of unemployed people actively looking for work fell to […]
August 4, 2022 | COVID Vaccine Lawsuits Begin
NorthShore University HealthSystem in Chicago was sued by a nonprofit religious organization called Liberty Counsel. The group claims that NorthShore violated workers’ religious autonomy by dismissing religious exemptions and forcing all workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. NorthShore was in the wrong and decided to settle for $10,337,500. Over 500 current and past employees will […]
August 4, 2022 | Bear Market Update
As of yesterday’s close, the economically sensitive small-cap Russell 2000 index had bounced 15% from June 12 and remained -22% from its October 21, 2021 high. The tech-heavy Nasdaq had rallied 19% since June 16 and remained -21% since November. Canada’s resource and bank-heavy TSX was +7% since July 14’s low and -11% from its […]
August 3, 2022 | Fertilizer Bans Lead to Food Scarcity
Canada’s Trudeau is proposing to reduce fertilizer with the globalist goal of achieving zero emissions by 2030. Every indicator says that food scarcity is on the rise, and yet politicians are continually making it harder to farm. Trudeau’s plan entails a 30% reduction in fertilizer and is a direct threat to the food supply. Fertilizer […]
August 3, 2022 | Inflation Explained
Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976. In the 1960s, Friedman declared that inflation is ‘always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon’ — a problem of printing too much money. The 29 second video below explains why inflation is just like alcoholism […]
August 3, 2022 | Bond Yields are Responding
The worlds most important central bank, the US Federal Reserve, raised rates another 75bps this past week. The following day, second quarter GDP contracted 0.9%, marking the second straight quarter of contracting economic growth. While policy makers are not officially calling it a recession, we are arguably in one already. As highlighted by the always […]
August 2, 2022 | Klaus Schwab – How to Rule the World – Maybe!
Klaus Schwab does not understand human nature or how the world economy functions. He preaches Stakeholder Economics which failed and was instituted during the Depression BECAUSE there were no government programs. The theory then was that companies should contribute to saving society. It failed because there was no coordination, for every company was […]
August 2, 2022 | Housing Leading The Economy into Recession
Eric Basmajian explains what the 2022 housing downturn means for the coming recession. Here is a direct video link. He further reviews the significance of other economic indicators in this audio segment. In Episode 263 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Eric Basmajian. Eric is an economic cycle analyst and the Founder of EPB Macro Research, […]
August 1, 2022 | US National Debt to Surpass 185% of GDP
The Congressional Budget Office warned that US federal debt is expected to rise 185% within the next 30 years. Total debt holdings could double the size of US GDP by 2051. No politician or spender of this debt cares as they have no intention of paying it off. The Congressional Budget Office is calling this […]
July 31, 2022 | Are We in a Recession?
They will never learn. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell apologized for calling inflation “transitory” when all data pointed to it rising. The White House conveniently changed the definition of a recession days before the GDP data was released and declared that two consecutive quarters of decline no longer qualified as a recession. Now, Treasury Secretary […]
July 31, 2022 | A Weird Recession
Professional economists, perhaps tired of being asked, years ago formed a committee to officially mark the beginning and end of recessions, the NBER (Nation Bureau of Economic Research) committee considers a variety of data, but its final decision is subjective. Many of those who pay attention prefer a more objective rule, such as “two consecutive […]
July 31, 2022 | Trading Desk Notes For July 30, 2022
Markets assume “Peak Fed Tightening” has come and gone – stocks, bonds, commodities and gold rally, the US Dollar weakens The Fed raised s/t rates by 75bps Wednesday. The initial market reaction was muted, but during Powell’s press conference, markets decided the Fed would be less aggressive than previously thought – stocks and bonds rallied hard, […]
July 31, 2022 | How Bad News Trapped Bears
Last week’s price action served to remind us that big rallies and even entire bull markets are driven mainly by short covering. This doesn’t happen by accident; Wall Street’s quasi-criminal masterminds set short squeezes in motion using news as a catalyst. The booby traps they employ are more or less predictable, but they succeed anyway […]
July 30, 2022 | Argentina’s Economy Collapses
Argentina’s economy has collapsed. Around 57% of adults in the nation are currently unemployed. The Socialist nation has programs in place to compensate, costing the country around $6 million daily. However, socialism no longer works when you run out of other people’s money. July’s inflation report showed an uptick over 60%. Harry Lorenzo, chief finance officer […]
July 29, 2022 | Persistent and Large Rate Hikes by the Fed Signal the End of an Era
This week’s large rate hike by the Federal Reserve means that the era of the Greenspan Put is over. The Fed increased its base rate by 75 basis points this week and hinted that more increases are coming, in spite of widespread worries about a weak stock market and an economy that might be already […]
July 29, 2022 | Bears are a Series of Ladders and Snakes
The S&P 500 closes July in its fourth and largest counter-trend rally since beginning the 2022 bear market (green highlights below from my partner Cory Venable)–now just -14% from its January 4th high. Other recessionary bears have included a series of similar rebounds (six in 2000-2003 and five in 2007-09) that all broke to lower […]
July 27, 2022 | The Drought Cycle & Climate Change
QUESTION: Hello Martin and Team, My question is related to a gentleman I watched on Greg Hunters Watchdog News that Martin goes on with from time to time. Greg interviewed —- —–. The discussion was around chemtrails and the gov’t messing with the rain patterns, also lake Mead and the Las Vegas drain plug which I […]
July 27, 2022 | Interest Rate Hikes Will Not Save Us from Inflation
Rather than making money harder to get, the U.S. government needs to focus on the other side of the demand vs. supply equation. In prescribing cures for inflation, economists rely on the diagnosis of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman: inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon—too much money chasing too few goods. But that equation […]