Posted Under: Bullish • GDP • Government • Markets • Monday Morning Outlook • Interest Rates • Spending • Taxes • Stocks Last December we wrote "we finally have more than just hope to believe that this year, 2017, is the year the Plow Horse Economy finally gets a spring in its step." We expected real GDP growth to accelerate from 2.0% in 2016 to "about 2.6%" in 2017. Our optimism [...]
Posted Under: Government • Monday Morning Outlook • Productivity Models of the economy are pretty useful tools. And simple models are some of the most useful. They help people envision how the world works. They help organize thinking. For example, the model that says potential U.S. economic growth is determined by "population (labor force) growth" plus "productivity" is an [...]
Bullish • Government • Markets • Monday Morning Outlook • Fed Reserve • Interest Rates • Stocks The Federal Reserve has a problem. At 4.1%, the jobless rate is already well below the 4.6% it thinks unemployment would/could/should average over the long run. We think the unemployment rate should get to 3.5% by the end of 2019 and wouldn't be shocked if it got that low [...]
Now that Black Friday has come and gone and Cyber Monday is upon us, you're going to hear a blizzard of numbers and reports about the US consumer. So far, these numbers show blowout on-line sales and a mild decline in foot traffic at brick-and-mortar stores. Both are better than expected given the ongoing [...]
Bullish • GDP • Government • Monday Morning Outlook • Spending • Taxes We've called it a "Plow Horse" economy, which was our metaphor invented to counter forecasters who said slow growth meant a recession was on its way. A Plow Horse is always slow, but that slowness hides underlying strength – it was never going to slip and fall. Now, the economy is accelerating. [...]
Are you an investor or a trader? Investors think long- term, while traders focus on short-term price movements. Trading furs, cloth, commodities, or tulips, has gone back centuries, if not millennium, but was about adding value and moving goods to markets. In other words, through trading many ran businesses that looked [...]
30 years ago this week, the US stock market suffered its greatest one day loss in history when it dropped some 22%. This marked the second day of a 27% two day decline and the end of a total fall of more than 40% from a late summer peak. That day, forever known as [...]
Ten years ago this October 9, the stock market hit an all-time high level. Over the next 17 months, a disastrous mix of market greed, unintended consequences from poorly conceived financial regulations, and even worse reactions to those unintended consequences caused the stock market to decline by more than half. Thus, October 9, 2007 [...]
If the current economic expansion lasts another year and a half, it’ll be the longest on record, even surpassing the expansion of the 1990s that ended in early 2001. Notice how we didn’t say it’ll be the “best” expansion of all-time, just the longest; it’s not the best by a long shot. [...]