Weekly Commentary Archives

Please join Doug Noland and David McAlvany this Thursday, October 22nd, at 4:00pm Eastern/ 2:00pm Mountain time for the Tactical Short Q3 recap conference call, “Managing Short Exposure in Extreme Uncertainty.” Click here to register. [...]

Please join Doug Noland and David McAlvany Thursday, October 22nd, at 4:00PM Eastern/ 2:00pm Mountain time for the Tactical Short Q3 recap conference call, “Managing Short Exposure in Extreme Uncertainty.” Click here to register. The [...]

It significantly raises the stakes for a potential nightmare scenario: with less than five weeks until election day, the President contracts COVID-19. As if this election cycle wasn’t chaotic enough. As CNN put it: “A [...]

The numbers are just monstrous. The Fed’s own data illuminate the historic Monetary Disorder that today runs wild. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. Treasuries. Debt and Equities Securities. The banking system. The Household balance sheet. [...]

September 17 – Wall Street Journal (Greg Ip): “Can words take the place of actions? The Federal Reserve hopes so. On Wednesday it issued a policy statement promising to get inflation above 2%. In their [...]

New data released Friday confirm ongoing historic Chinese Credit excess. Total Aggregate Financing increased (a ridiculous) $524 billion during August to $40.5 TN, doubling July’s growth and exceeding estimates by almost 40%. It was the [...]

QE fundamentally changed finance. What commenced at the Federal Reserve with a post-mortgage finance Bubble, $1 TN Treasury buying operation morphed into open-ended purchases of Treasuries, MBS, corporate bonds and even corporate ETFs holding high-yield [...]

The Wall Street Journal referred to a “a milestone” – “a major shift in how [the Fed] sets interest rates by dropping its longstanding practice of preemptively lifting them to head off higher inflation.” The [...]

The Nasdaq100 (NDX) jumped another 3.5% this week, increasing 2020 gains to 32.3%. Amazon gained 4.3% during the week, boosting y-t-d gains to 77.8% – and market capitalization to $1.626 TN. Apple surged 8.2% this [...]

A “sloppy” auction saw 30-year Treasury yields surge 21 bps this week to 1.45%, an almost seven-week closing high.  Ten-year Treasury yields jumped 14 bps to 0.71%, while benchmark MBS yields rose 17 bps to [...]

Understandably, attention remains focused on the dominant U.S. tech stocks, record highs in Nasdaq, sector rotation opportunities, and the Robinhood phenomenon. It’s a mania, after all. There are as well stimulus negotiations and the administration’s [...]

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, [...]