I recently came across a December 1996 San Jose Mercury News article on tech pioneers’ attempts to carry the pre-browser Internet’s bulletin board community vibe over to the new-fangled World Wide Web. In effect, the article is talking about social media a decade before MySpace and Facebook and ...

Beginning in December of last year, following the announcement by OPEC of a cut in oil production, I have discussed the “headwinds” that persist against a sustained rise in oil prices. “The supply/demand dynamics currently suggest that oil prices and energy-related investments could find a lon...

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...

The Q Ratio is a popular method of estimating the fair value of the stock market developed by Nobel Laureate James Tobin. It’s a fairly simple concept, but laborious to calculate. The Q Ratio is the total price of the market divided by the replacement cost of all its companies. Fortunately, th...

The entire global economy now depends on this stripped-of-information “market” for its stability. Ho-hum, another day, another record high in the S&P 500 (SPX). What is this market telling us? If you’re long, the market is screaming “you’re a genius!”: But ot...

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...

On Monday, the markets broke out, again, to all-time highs. This is not surprising and something that I noted over the weekend. To wit:  “Stepping back from the sector-specific action, if you only looked at the S&P 500 to judge what was happening in the markets, you wouldn’t suspect anythin...

Towards the end of the 1990’s tech stock bubble, “new media” – i.e., the Internet — was ascendant and old media like magazines, newspapers and broadcast TV were yesterday’s news. This was reflected in relative stock valuations, which gave Internet pioneer AOL the ability to buy vene...

If something happens seven times in a row, do you think that there is a pretty good chance that it will happen the eighth time too?  Immediately prior to the last seven recessions, we have seen an inverted yield curve, and it looks like it is about to happen again for the very first time since the...

No! I am not talking about President Trump but rather the crash in both Technology stocks, and Oil prices, which are obstructing the continuation of the “bull market.”  As I discussed this past Tuesday, the mini “flash crash” in Technology certainly woke investors up. “While there is cer...

All of a sudden the Fed got a little tougher. Perhaps the success of the hit movie Wonder Woman has inspired Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen to discard her prior timidity to show us how much monetary muscle she can flex when the time comes for action. Although the Fed’s decision this week to ...

Not even during the worst parts of the last recession did things ever get this bad for the U.S. retail industry.  As you will see in this article, more than 300 retailers have already filed for bankruptcy in 2017, and it is being projected that a staggering 8,640 stores will close in America by th...

Lately, there has been a lot of chatter about the “Return Of Animal Spirits” as the catalyst to drive markets higher…and higher…and higher. But exactly what does that mean? Animal spirits came from the Latin term “spiritus animalis” which means the breath that awakens the human mind. Its...

We want this time to be different so badly, we can almost taste it. If you visit San Francisco, you will find it difficult to walk more than a few blocks in central S.F. without encountering a major construction project. It seems that every decrepit low-rise building in the city has been razed and i...

Back in February, our friends shared a lesson with subscribers that included a “very bullish chart pattern” in Starbucks (SBUX) — ahead of the 3-month 10% rally. Now, they’ve just posted a new video explaining the SBUX opportunity and preparing you for what’s next. Wa...

Global macro economic data has been weak for many years, but there’s now a very real chance of a world-wide recession happening in 2017. Why? A dramatic and worsening shortfall in new credit creation. The world’s major central banks have, again, done the world an enormous disservice.  Instead o...