I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. Wayne Gretzky I took my wife to dinner Saturday night at a local, boutique hotel. The Willcox Hotel was established in the late 19th century to cater to the Winter Colony of wealthy northerners who spent their winters in South Carolina. […]
How far can this rally go? Should we be locking in some gains? That’s a paraphrase of questions I’ve been getting from clients recently. It does seem as if the stock market goes up every day and with all the ups and downs of the last few years, it is natural to wonder if we’re […]
Nvidia reported earnings last week and they were, to be sober about it, incredible. The question for anyone who owns the stock or is considering owning it, is not what did it do in the past but, rather, what might it do in the future.
A bank’s assets triple over a few years when interest rates are low. The bank invests those assets in long term, higher yielding municipal bonds with little credit risk. Inflation flares up and interest rates rise, reducing the value of the municipal bonds and funding dries up. Regulators become concerned that the failure of this […]
Last week started with investors focused on Jerome Powell’s testimony before Congress and any hints about future monetary policy. During the course of two days of testimony, that was deemed more hawkish than expected, the market priced in another rate hike and pushed out the possibility of a rate cut all the way to January […]
I was reading Bill McBride’s blog, Calculated Risk, recently and came across this post on heavy truck sales as a recession indicator. As Bill notes: Usually, heavy truck sales decline sharply prior to a recession. Sales were solid in January. It certainly looks like sales do indeed peak before recession. But how long before recession? […]
I’ve been writing for over a year about the economy rebalancing back to its pre-COVID trends. The massive fiscal expansion during COVID and the Fed’s accommodation of that spending via QE is what caused the spike in prices over the last 18 months. Yes, there were supply issues too but the size of the demand […]
The Fed meets this week and is widely expected to raise the Fed Funds rate by 0.25% to a range of 4.5% – 4.75%. The market has factored in a small probability that they do nothing and leave rates alone, but they’ll probably do what’s expected because they’ve spent the last couple of months preparing […]
Note: This will be my last full commentary for 2022. I will spend the month of December on research for next year, visiting with family and taking some much needed time off. I will still be watching markets, as will all the other members of the Alhambra team and if something happens which requires me […]
When we think about the challenges facing an investor today, the big problems, the things we worry about that could cause a lot more harm than some interest rate hikes, are mostly outside the United States. China is prominent this weekend because of demonstrations against their zero-COVID policies. The Chinese people appear to be pretty […]