There has been a great deal of chatter about the strength of the American job market. And with good reason. Most measures of employment health – U-2 unemployment rate, jobless claims, wage increases, year-over-year job growth, etc. – support the notion that U.S. workers are “winning.” On the other hand, very few folks have addressed the possibility that the data are more likely to weaken than strengthen. On the contrary. So much faith is being placed on tax cut stimulus…
“The most important item over time in valuation is obviously interest rates,” Warren Buffett explained in 2017. Never mind that this appears to contradict his beliefs back in 2001. Sixteen years earlier, Mr. Buffett stated that stock market-capitalization-to-GDP was “the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment.” On this indicator, then, stocks have rarely been as over-priced as they are right now. It is certainly possible that the financial crisis of 2008 fundamentally altered the investment…
Let me be quick to acknowledge that yield curve inversion can have considerable lag time before a recession. And for that matter, the U.S. Treasury bond curve can invert long before a stock market bear. For instance, 10-year yields fell below two-year yields in February of 2006. That was approximately 22 months before the recession officially hit in December of 2007. What’s more, between 2/2006-10/2007, the S&P 500 managed to climb more than 20%. There’s more. The 1990s Treasury bond…
Bridgewater Associates has roughly $160 billion under management, making it the largest hedge fund on the planet. Exchange traded funds like Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets (VWO) the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) and the S&P 500 SPDR Trust (SPY) head the list of top holdings. Last week, Bridgewater said, “We are bearish on financial assets as the U.S. economy progresses toward the late cycle, liquidity has been removed, and the markets are pricing in a continuation of recent conditions despite the…
What if I told you that today’s tech bubble is more hazardous than the one that popped in 2000? You might say, “That’s crazy. Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Netflix (NFLX), Google (GOOG) — today’s internet-oriented superstars are real companies with real profits.” Granted, all of these corporations are profitable. They may be rapid growers as well. That does not mean investors are paying reasonable or rational prices for their fractional stakes. Microsoft, Cisco and Dell represented roughly 50%…
Mortgage interest payments as well as non—mortgage interest payments are costing consumers more and more of their disposable income. Consider the non-mortgage variety. Personal interest payments have already recovered levels not seen since the financial crisis. To be sure, interest payments are not the only thing taking a bite out of the cost of living. Oil prices have moved meaningfully higher. According to a 2005 study by the Federal Reserve, oil price increases adversely affect aggregate consumer spending. Is it…
Did seven years of zero percent rate policy, three rounds of quantitative easing (QE) and “Operation Twist” provide a consequence-free credit boom? Or will “too-low-for-too-long” monetary manipulation eventually lead to a credit bust – one with adverse effects for asset prices as well as economic growth? It is not particularly difficult to understand that the mid-2000s credit expansion became an unsustainable bubble for households. At the pre-crisis peak in the fourth quarter of 2007, household financial obligations as a percent…
As recently as the November 2016 election, the S&P 500’s dividend yield (2.0%+) was higher than the 10-year Treasury bond’s yield (1.75%). Many exclaimed that ultra-low interest rates alone justified extremely high stock valuations, including a GAAP-based price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 25. A year and a half later, the S&P 500’s dividend yield (1.8%) offers much less than the 10-year’s yield (3.0%) and struggles to compete with cash equivalents. Meanwhile, the benchmark’s GAAP-based P/E is still in the stratosphere at…
Can the U.S. economy grow without the federal government overspending? Apparently not. Since the financial crisis in 2008, GDP has only grown alongside massive Treasury debt issuance. Some might argue that it does not matter how the economy expands as long as it is expanding. After all, the U.S. is still capable of paying the interest on its mushrooming obligations. On the flip side, the bond market does not believe that the near-term economic picture will be quite so rosy. The paltry 0.18%…
According to Michael Leibowitz of 720 Global, the cumulative amount of new debt issued by the U.S government surpassed the cumulative amount of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) growth in each year since the financial crisis of 2008. In other words, GDP economic growth would have been negative in every year following the crisis were it not for massive federal deficits. Unfortunately, it’s not just the past that we are talking about. The International Monetary Fund projects that the U.S….
