According to Winston Churchill, “A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen”. With the mid-term elections over a year away and the next presidential election more than three years away, this […]
Whether it is “bittersweet”, “jumbo shrimp”, or “plastic silverware”, there are words or combinations of words that, despite many of them being commonly-used components of the American lexicon, are on their surface counter-intuitive and nonsensical. They are referred to as oxymorons, and their economic equivalent is almost certainly “stagflation”, the existence of which, when it […]
“From that day on, we was [sic] always together. Jenny and me was [sic] like peas and carrots.” –From the movie Forrest Gump. As was noted by this classic Tom Hanks character, whether it be Texas and hot summers, birthdays and cake, or higher inflation and higher interest rates, there are certain things that just […]
Is it possible that we just witnessed “peak everything” (or at least peak many things)? Did we just witness a peak in the growth rate of money supply, in the pace of government fiscal stimulus, in the rate of increase in monetary stimulus, in corporate profit growth, and in economic growth? Could it be that […]
“The Great Fire of Rome” was reportedly started in 64 A.D. upon secret orders from Emperor Nero, who wanted to clear the way for a giant new palace called the Domus Aurea. By the time that the fire burned itself out nine days later, two-thirds of the city had been destroyed and Nero, by ignoring […]
In a recently published interview with Barrons Magazine, we noted our belief that, “This is a very strange market on many levels. We have sentiment levels and valuations of a very old, mature bull market. But we have monetary and fiscal policies of a young, emerging bull market, and an economy just coming out of […]
The most recent Bank of America Fund Manager Survey of 220 institutional portfolio managers managing $630 billion revealed something quite extraordinary. For the first time in a year, the COVID-19 pandemic was not named as the biggest risk to the stock market. In fact, it wasn’t even close. Six percent of respondents listed a potential […]
Legendary investor Warren Buffett once noted, very insightfully, that “only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” Mr. Buffet’s point is that it rarely becomes evident during a roaring bull market who is overly leveraged, overly aggressive, or improperly diversified. This is particularly true after extended periods when there has […]
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In market analysis, there tends to be very little difference between being early and being wrong, and there may be no better example of this fact than the televised December 1996 speech given by then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in which he coined the now-infamous phrase “irrational exuberance”. At the time, as is the […]
Among a myriad of other things, the year 2020 will be remembered as a period that featured an unprecedented use of the word “unprecedented”. The extraordinary nature of this year is evidenced in everything from unprecedented pandemic case counts and the most ambitious vaccine campaign in U.S. history to a record election turnout, and from […]
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