March 23, 2023 Andrew Jackson was right! In 1834 he leveled a searing accusation against the Second Bank of the United States… “Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. …you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the …
March 21, 2023 It was a Monday in October like any other when the stock market began a small but persistent trend lower. The S&P 500 closed down five straight days giving up just over 5% of its value. Given the market was in the middle of a 5-year bull trend, it didn’t raise an …
March 16, 2023 The Illuminati… The Skull and Bones… The Bilderbergs… The Pentaverate… They’re all “secret societies” who, it is believed, exert some sinister influence throughout the world. Most are more exaggerations of what they actually are/were. (I’ll leave the Pentaverate up to you.) But there is one secret society that’s very much real and …
March 14, 2023 It’s not supposed to work this way. Partners in crime are typically expected to have each others’ backs. That’s how conspiracies — “conspiracy: (n) a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful” — keep from being revealed as crimes. But it looks like enough has become enough for …
March 9, 2023 If you compare the returns of Berkshire Hathaway, going all the way back to 1965, to those of the S&P 500 (including dividends) you may not believe what you find… Berkshire’s average annual return over those years was 19.8% — fully double the S&P. And if you look at overall gains, an …
March 7, 2023 Big box retailer Target released its earnings report last week. And for the first time in a year, its numbers didn’t suck… Earnings per share came in at $1.89 vs. $1.40 expected, while reported revenue was $31.4 billion vs. $30.72 billion. Granted, these were fourth quarter numbers which notably cover the holiday …
March 2, 2023 I don’t usually like to toot my own horn, but you can’t say I didn’t warn you… What dire warning is about to come true? I’ll lay it out in a second, but first… On Valentines day, Cecilia Rouse, the chairperson of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors wrote a fawning Valentines …
February 28, 2023 Last week the Fed released the minutes from their January/February Fed meeting. Markets love these because, in the old days, they supposedly gave investors/traders THE insight into the Fed’s innermost thoughts. Economic reports are important until they’re not. Same goes for FOMC minutes. This latest release of the FOMC’s minutes had a …
February 23, 2023 It was a big week for economic releases last week. Retail sales showed a surprising boom, popping 3% month over month. That, of course, was what they call a “seasonally adjusted” number. Seasonal adjustments are statistical tweaks made to a time series of economic data that supposedly smooth out “misleading” data caused …
February 21, 2023 6.4% That was last week’s headline CPI print for January. And from the Good News/Bad News department: The good news is that inflation has once again slowed year over year. The bad news is that the slow down in the pace of inflation (the “disinflation” that Jay Powell now likes to talk …
