Bitcoin is Back, With a Vengeance

Bitcoin is Back, With a Vengeance Bitcoin, the ‘nothing’ asset is back, and it continues to rally after a strong 2023, but still not quite at all-time highs. Many are focusing on this rally to argue for bitcoin as a legitimate asset, but there are better reasons for that consideration. Bitcoin is often promoted as […]
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Pre-emptive Pivot

Pre-emptive Pivot The news this week was the Fed (again) with the surprise change of anticipating rate cuts. Nick Timiraos, the so called ‘Fed Whisperer’ at the Wall Street Journal wrote about Chair Powell’s comments: “Dec 1: ‘It would be premature to … speculate on when policy might ease.’ Dec 13: Rate cuts are something […]
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U-Turns

U-Turns For the last 18 months, single data points have regularly surprised the markets in both directions, inciting highly uncertain investors to project forward a “changed” economic outlook. This has led to rapid whipsaws of both bond and stock prices, and this past week was no exception. The CPI report triggered a substantial decline in […]
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Tale of the Tape

Tale of the Tape You have to be a very attentive student of the stock market to understand just how unusual this year has been. The year isn’t over yet, so much can change from now to the end of the year, but what has happened thus far is startling. If you read these pages […]
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Making Ends Meet

Making Ends Meet Many market pundits are predicting that inflation will stabilize at a higher rate than the 2% Fed target. The rationale is that as inflation comes down, the Fed does not want to force inflation to 2% and risk a bad recession. As a result, Inflation is more likely to level off around […]
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Gradually, Then Suddenly

Gradually, Then Suddenly We’re getting more than a bit tired of the debt ceiling ‘debate’ (and we use that term very loosely). The sooner this comes to head and is ‘resolved’ (again, we use the term loosely), the better. Fundamentally, it is impossible to resolve our debt problem in the next 2-3 weeks. The current […]
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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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