Equities rallied to begin the week. With Syrian missile strikes more limited than feared and no military response from Russia, there was immediate impetus to unwind hedges. That it was option expiration week ensured plenty [...]

Please join me and David McAlvany for the MWM Tactical Short Second-Quarter 2018 Conference Call: “Market Structure, Trump Tariffs, Higher Rates… Markets at a Precipice?” Thursday, April 19th, at 4:30pm [...]

Please join me and David McAlvany for the MWM Tactical Short Second-Quarter 2018 Conference Call: “Market Structure, Trump Tariffs, Higher Rates… Markets at a Precipice?” Thursday, April 19th, at 4:30pm EST (2:30pm MST): Click here to [...]

For the Final Week of a Wild Quarter: The S&P500 rallied 2.0% (down 1.2% Q1), and the Dow gained 2.4% (down 2.5%). The Utilities jumped 2.9% (down 4.5%). The Banks recovered 2.5% (down 0.2%), and [...]

Deutsche Bank (DB) dropped 13% this week to a 15-month low. DB is now down 28% y-t-d. European banks (STOXX) sank 5.0% this week. Hong Kong (Hang Seng) Financials were down 4.9%. Japan’s TOPIX Bank [...]

WSJ: “Ten Years After the Bear Stearns Bailout, Nobody Thinks It Would Happen Again.” Myriad changes to the financial structure have seemingly safeguarded the financial system from another 2008-style crisis. The big Wall Street financial [...]

So much uncertainty in the world these days. Some things, however, we know with certitude: U.S. Debt, the value of the securities markets and Household Net Worth do grow to the sky. The Fed’s latest [...]

After posting an intra-week high of 25,800 on Tuesday, the DJIA then dropped 1,583 points (6.1%) at the week’s Friday morning low (24,217) – before closing the session at 24,538 (down 3.0% for the week). [...]

The Shanghai Composite traded as high as 3,587 intraday on Monday, January 29th, a more than two-year high. This followed the S&P500’s all-time closing high (2,873) on the previous Friday. On February 9th, the Shanghai [...]

U.S. stocks posted the strongest week of gains since 2013 (would have been 2011 if not for late-day selling). The S&P500 surged 4.3%, and the Nasdaq Composite jumped 5.3%. The [...]

February 6 – Wall Street Journal (Spencer Jakab): “Only very rarely has a trade gone from being so good to being so bad so quickly. Among the most profitable trades [...]

Even well into 2017, variations of the “secular stagnation” thesis remained popular within the economics community. Accelerating synchronized global growth notwithstanding, there’s been this enduring notion that economies are burdened by “insufficient aggregate demand.” The [...]

Ten-year Treasury yields jumped 11 bps this week to 2.66%, moving decisively above the key 2.60% technical level – to the highest yields since July 2014. Two-year yields ended the week up seven bps to [...]

This might be the most fascinating market backdrop of my career. Not yet as dramatic as 1987, 1990, 1994, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2009 or 2012 – [...]

Financial conditions are much too loose. They remain too loose at home; they remain too loose abroad. January 3 – ETF.com (Heather Bell): “…ETF flows really blew away previous [...]

2017 was phenomenal in so many ways. The year will be remembered for a tumultuous first year of the Trump Presidency, the passage of major tax legislation and seemingly endless [...]

Ten-year Treasury yields jumped 13 bps this week to 2.48%, the high going back to March. German bund yields rose 12 bps to 0.42%. U.S. equities have been reveling in tax reform exuberance. Bonds not [...]

Janet Yellen’s Wednesday news conference was her final as Fed chair. Dr. Yellen has a long and distinguished career as an economist and public servant. Her four-year term at the [...]

In nominal dollars, Total U.S. System (Non-Financial, Financial and Foreign) borrowings expanded $1.007 TN during the third quarter to a record $68.012 TN. Total Non-Financial Debt (NFD) rose a nominal $732 billion during the quarter [...]