Last week, I wrote about the rate-cut optimism that has recently driven the stock market to new highs. Today I want to dig into that a bit further and explain why this shift may mark the beginning of the end for both this
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Sighting: A mild recession, a not-so-mild bear market?
Recession fears resurfaced at the end of 2018 as a combination of negative data surprises, communication blunders by the Fed, slowing growth overseas, and rising
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It's important to have a basic understanding of the competing approaches to economics and government.
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When I was a kid, there was always a certain allure to the "Grab bag" — the mysterious bag-o-stuff that didn't reveal its contents until after you bought it. As an avid young football card collector, I recall bouts of
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The stock market suffered another day of steep losses yesterday, with the S&P 500 falling -3.2%. Small stocks were hit even harder, with the Russell 2000 down -4.4%. It was the fifth day so far in 2018 that the S&P 500 has
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Hurricane Florence appears poised to blast the Carolinas in the coming days, with 1.7 million people currently under evacuation warnings and some 5.4 million covered by various hurricane watches and warnings. It's a
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Rising and Falling Uncertainty
Worries abound, from Chinese trade wars…to midterm campaign-related uncertainty…. [But] I’ve crunched data since long before PCs arrived, [so I know that] the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has
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Every day seems to bring new headlines about the next recession — what will cause it, when it will hit, and how bad it will be. Today, for example, MarketWatch is prominently displaying this article: "Why a major trade war
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At the end of SMI's June article, What the Flattening Yield Curve Says About the Economy and Markets, I wrote the following:
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In the decade since the 2008 financial crisis ended, interest rates have dominated most discussions of the economy and financial markets. The Federal Reserve assured this would be the case by lowering short-term interest
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