Weekly Commentary Archives

Another fascinating – if not comforting – week. A Friday Wall Street Journal headline: “Big Tech’s Embarrassment of Riches – Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google all show resilience during pandemic while undergoing congressional scrutiny.” Amazon, [...]

The Shanghai Composite traded as high as 3,382 during Tuesday trading, before reversing 5.5% lower to end the week at 3,192. The Shanghai Composite previously surged 16% over eight sessions (June 30th to July 9th), [...]

Please join Doug Noland and David McAlvany this coming Thursday, July 23rd, at 4:00PM Eastern/ 2:00pm Mountain time for the Tactical Short Q2 recap conference call, “Confirmation of the Global [...]

The Shanghai Composite surged 7.3% this week, increasing y-t-d gains to 10.9%. The CSI 300 rose 7.6%, with 2020 gains of 16.0%. China’s growth-oriented ChiNext Index’s 12.8% surge boosted year-to-date gains to 54.5%. Copper jumped [...]

“U.S. Stocks Finish Best Quarter in More Than 20 Years” – yet another extraordinary period worthy of documenting in some detail. The S&P500 returned 20.5%, led by energy companies Halliburton (up 89.5%) and Marathon Oil [...]

The much vaunted “V” recovery is improbable. To simplify, a somewhat “w”-looking scenario is a higher probability. After such an abrupt and extraordinary collapse in economic activity, a decent bounce was virtually assured. Millions would [...]

Can we even attempt a reasonable discussion? Someone’s got this wrong. June 12 – Reuters (Judy Hua, Cate Cadell, Winni Zhou and Andrew Galbraith): “A Beijing district put itself on a ‘wartime’ footing and the [...]

Financial crisis erupted in March. The Fed slashed rates at a March 3rd emergency meeting – and then began aggressively expanding its holdings/balance sheet (creating market liquidity). Even from a “flow of funds” perspective, it [...]

For posterity, some numbers: Over the past three weeks (14 sessions), the S&P500 gained 11.5%. The KBW Bank Index surged 36.1%, with the NYSE Financials up 23.9%. The Dow Transports rose 27.2% in 14 sessions, [...]

A global pandemic and historic economic downturn. A rapidly escalating U.S./China cold war. Surging U.S. unemployment and economic depression. A deeply fragmented society with intensifying animosity and conflict. Heightened social instability, with mounting protests (and [...]

For the Week: The S&P500 rallied 3.2% (down 8.5% y-t-d), and the Dow rose 3.3% (down 14.3%). The Utilities gained 2.8% (down 12.2%). The Banks jumped 5.9% (down 40%), and the Broker/Dealers rose 5.0% (down [...]

“Bubble” is commonly understood to describe a divergence between overvalued market prices and underlying asset values. And while price anomalies are a typical consequence, they are generally not among the critical aspects of Bubbles. I’ll [...]

The work of the great economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) has always resonated. When I ponder analytical frameworks pertinent to these extraordinary times, none are more germane than Schumpeter’s Business Cycle Analysis. Best known for “creative [...]

In a CBB from a decade or so ago, I noted that at the commencement of WWII President Roosevelt marshaled an agreement from the major warring parties to avoid the bombing of civilian targets. It [...]

Now on a weekly basis, we’re witnessing things that couldn’t happen – actually happen. April 20 – Bloomberg (Catherine Ngai, Olivia Raimonde, and Alex Longley): “Of all the wild, unprecedented swings in financial markets since [...]

Please join Doug Noland and David McAlvany this coming Thursday, April 23rd, at 4:00PM Eastern/ 2:00pm Mountain time for the Tactical Short Q1 recap conference call, “Managing Short Exposure in an Unprecedented Environment” Click here [...]

Sitting at the dinner table, our eleven-year old son inquired: “If a big meteor was about to hit the earth, how much money would the Fed print?” I complimented his sense of humor. Yet it [...]

The past week witnessed 6.6 million new U.S. unemployment claims, pushing the two-week surge to a sickening almost 10 million. The U.S. economy is sliding into the steepest of downturns, with awful consequences for society, [...]

Being an analyst of Credit and Bubbles over the past few decades has come with its share of challenges. Greater challenges await. I expect to dedicate the rest of my life to defending Capitalism. One [...]

I’ve been dreading this. In the midst of all the policy responses to the collapse of the mortgage finance Bubble, I recall writing something to the effect: “I understand we can’t allow the system to [...]