One More For The Road

One More for the Road As we enter July, with Jay Powell singing a hawkish tune, we expect the market to be very focused on one question: Are interest rates going higher? The answer lies in the inflation data yet to be reported. If inflation fails to get better, then interest rates are likely heading […]
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“There will be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done”

“There will be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done”1 Many people view the stock market as more gambling than investing, which is easy to understand as the market seems to constantly have unpredictable gyrations both up and down. If you want to gamble on the stock market, you certainly can, and many people […]
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It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World Our title this week is also the title of a 1963 comedy. The movie is about a group of motorists that witness a deadly accident. The drivers’ final words are the location of a hidden stash of money. The situation quickly devolves into a wild and hilarious free […]
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It’s the Punch You Don’t See Coming that Knocks You Out

It’s the Punch You Don’t See Coming That Knocks You Out The banking crisis has been in the news for better than a month now, but we suspect that the real crisis is ahead of us, not behind us. The ‘disappearing deposits’ problem, that brought down SVB, Signature, and most recently First Republic, could be […]
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Implications of a Fracturing Global Economy

Implications of a Fracturing Global Economy Our comments each week typically revolve around shorter term issues but this week we want to spend some time thinking longer term, much longer term. The catalyst for this shift was a speech given this week by Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), which discusses the […]
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Gold is Money. Everything Else is Credit.

Gold is Money, Everything Else is Credit. Question of the week: If gold is an inflation hedge, why did it fail to perform well last year when inflation was rampant? And if inflation is receding now, why is gold now approaching new all-time highs? Bloomberg Markets Live produced an article this week answering that question; […]
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Expert Failure

Expert Failure Quite a few years ago, I had the privilege to hear Malcom Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, speak about the ramifications of expert failure. His point was simple: If an idiot makes a mistake, it doesn’t matter very much because logically, no one is listening to the idiot. However, if […]
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