Weekly Commentary Archives

The world is now fully embroiled in a most precarious period. I wonder if the Fed is comfortable seeing the markets dash skyward – the small caps up 16.4% y-t-d, Banks 15.9%, Transports 15.2%, Biotechs [...]

February 8 – Bloomberg (Brian Chappatta): “Bond traders are dusting off their tried and true post-crisis playbook after the Federal Reserve’s pivot last month. What they don’t realize is that the game has most likely [...]

January 30 – Financial Times (Sam Fleming): “After putting traders on notice six weeks ago to expect further increases in US interest rates in 2019, the Federal Reserve… executed one of its sharpest U-turns in [...]

For the Week: The S&P500 slipped 0.2% (up 6.3% y-t-d), while the Dow added 0.1% (up 6.0%). The Utilities increased 0.7% (up 0.6%). The Banks added 0.7% (up 14.5%), while the Broker/Dealers declined 1.5% (up [...]

Please join Doug Noland and David McAlvany this Thursday, January 24th, at 4:00PM EST/ 2:00pm MST for the Tactical Short Q4 recap conference call, “The 2019 Secular Shift: Beginning the Long, Difficult Road.” Click here [...]

Please join Doug Noland and David McAlvany Thursday, January 24th, at 4:00PM EST/ 2:00pm MST for the Tactical Short Q4 recap conference call, “The 2019 Secular Shift: Beginning the Long, Difficult Road.” Click here to [...]

“Goldilocks with a capital ‘J’,” exclaimed an enthusiastic Bloomberg Television analyst. The Dow was up 747 points in Friday trading (more than erasing Thursday’s 660-point drubbing) on the back of a stellar jobs report and [...]

“Money” challenged – and often confounded – economic thinkers for centuries. It functions both as a “medium of exchange” and “unit of account.” Simple enough. Too often the focus has been how to use money [...]

I have little confidence history will get this right. Today’s overwhelming consensus view holds that Powell this week committed a major policy blunder. After his early-October “we’re a long way from neutral” “rookie mistake”, he [...]

December 13 – Financial Times (Chris Giles and Claire Jones): “When the European Central Bank switches off its money-printing press at the turn of this year and stops buying fresh assets, it will mark the [...]

Total Non-Financial Debt (NFD) expanded at a 4.4% annual rate during Q3 to a record $51.324 TN. Since the end of 2008, NFD has increased $16.3 TN, or 46%. Q3’s NFD growth rate was down [...]

Upon the public release of Jerome Powell’s Wednesday speech came the Bloomberg headline: “Powell: No Preset Policy Path, Rates ‘Just Below’ Neutral Range.” When the Fed Chairman began his presentation to the New York Economic [...]

For the Week: The S&P500 dropped 3.8% (down 1.5% y-t-d), and the Dow fell 4.4% (down 1.8%). The Utilities declined 1.4% (up 1.4%). The Banks lost 2.3% (down 8.1%), and the Broker/Dealers fell 2.8% (down [...]

What ever happened to “Six Sigma”? GE was one of the most beloved and hyped S&P500 stocks during the late-nineties Bubble Era. With “visionary” Jack Welch at the helm, GE was being transformed into a [...]

The Dow (DJIA) jumped 545 points (2.1%) in Wednesday’s post-midterms trading. The S&P500’s 2.1% rise was overshadowed by the Nasdaq Comp’s 2.6% and the Nasdaq100’s 3.1% advances. Healthcare stocks surged, with the S&P500 Healthcare Index [...]

The Dow (DJIA) traded as low as 24,122 in late-Monday afternoon trading. By Friday’s open, the Dow had rallied 1,457 points, or 6.0%, to 25,579. Relatively speaking, the Dow was a tame kitten. From Monday’s [...]

Let’s begin with global. China’s yuan (CNY) traded to 6.9644 to the dollar in early-Friday trading, almost matching the low (vs. dollar) from December 2016 (6.9649). CNY is basically trading at lows going back to [...]

From the perspective of monitoring an unfolding global crisis, things turned only more concerning this week. The Shanghai Composite declined to 2,450 in early Friday trading, the low since November 2014 – and down almost [...]

Please join Doug Noland and David McAlvany this Thursday, October 18th at 4:00PM EST/ 2:00pm MST for the Tactical Short Q3 recap conference call, “Market Contagion is Back.” Click here [...]

October 3 – CNBC (Jeff Cox): “Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank has a ways to go yet before it gets interest rates to where they are neither restrictive nor accommodative. In [...]