Today’s release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 144.8, up from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at 4.99%, down from 5.12% last week. The WLI Growth indicator is now at 2.6, up from the previo...

As we get into the midst of the Q2 earnings season, we can take a closer look at the results through the 1st quarter of the year. Despite the exuberance from the media over the “number of companies that beat estimates” during the most recent reported period, 12-month operating earnings per s...

A Potential Road Map for the End of the Current Bull Market & Economic Expansion History books refer to the last economic slowdown we experienced, triggered by the 2007-2008 financial crisis, as the Great Recession. Its impacts were so severe—the worst global recession since the Great Depress...

In Janet Yellen’s semi-annual testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday, she made reference to the ongoing strength of employment as one of the reasons for continuing to “normalize” monetary policy by lifting interest rates and reducing the existing bond holdings of the Federal Reserve. To wit: ...

Did you know that the federal government is going to spend more than 4 trillion dollars this year?  To put that into perspective, U.S. GDP for the entire year of 2017 is going to be somewhere between 18 and 19 trillion dollars.  So when you are talking about 4 trillion dollars you are talking abou...

The fragility of our financial buffers will only be revealed when they fail in the next crisis. While buffer has a specific meaning in chemistry, I am using the word in the broad sense of a reserve resource that absorbs the initial destructive impacts of crises or system overloads. Marshland alon...

Let’s have a look at a long-term perspective on Treasury yields as of Friday’s close. The chart below shows the 10-Year Constant Maturity yield since 1962 along with the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) and inflation. The range has been astonishing. The stagflation that set in after the 1973 Oi...

On the “Real Investment Hour” on Tuesday night, I addressed the issue of price versus fundamentals. In the short-term, a period of one-year or less, political, fundamental, and economic data has very little influence over the market. This is especially the case in a late-stage bull market adva...

You can almost hear the announcer for the movie trailer; “In a world stricken by financial crisis, a country plagued by spiraling deficits and cities on the verge of collapse – a war is being waged; gauntlet’s thrown down and at the heart of it all; two dead white guys battling over the fate o...

There are two important areas of the market that have historically been good leading indicators of the strength, or weakness, of the markets and the economy. Oil and retail. Currently, both areas are sending warning signs that should not be readily dismissed. First, with respect to oil, the bounce i...

The past decade’s historically low interest rates convinced millions of Americans to buy cars they could only afford with hyper-cheap credit. This made auto sales one of the drivers of the recovery, but it also left far too many people with underwater “car mortgages” that will limit their spen...

Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair, recently stated; “Will I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? No, probably that would be going too far. But I do think we’re much safer and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don’t believe it will.”  That is a pretty b...

I have regularly written about the many shortcomings of human psychology when it comes to investing. More importantly, while the emotions of “greed” and “fear” are the predominant drivers of not only investor behavior over time, they are also attributable to the development and delivery of t...

In their policy announcement last week, the members of the FOMC claimed: “Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in May indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen and that economic activity has been rising moderately so far this year.” Economic data has...

Employers have no choice: it’s innovate/automate or die. Automation–networked robotics, software and processes–has already had a major impact on jobs. As this chart from my colleague Gordon T. Long illustrates, the rise of Internet technologies is reflected in the steady, long-term...

In some states, when a couple enters into divorce, the court may award “alimony,” or spousal support, to one of the former spouses for the express purpose of limiting any unfair economic effects by providing a continuing income to the spouse. The purpose is to help that spouse continue the “s...