In over thirty years of watching the economy we've seen recessions, recoveries (both slow and fast), panics, lulls, and boomlets. But we've rarely seen a job market this strong. Everything is hyper-politicized these days, and we get accused of playing politics all the time. But what we care about deeply, what drives our focus, is [...]
The US labor market has rarely been stronger. Recent figures from the Labor Department show US businesses had a total of 6.550 million job openings in March versus 6.585 million people who were unemployed. That's a gap of only 35,000 workers. By contrast, this gap never fell below 2 million in the previous economic expansion [...]
The bull market in U.S. stocks, which started on March 9, 2009, gets little respect. Those who have been bullish, and right, are mocked as "perma-bulls," while "perma-bears," who have been repeatedly wrong, are quoted endlessly. We don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times a recession has [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
Years ago we helped a firefighter with his retirement plan, and he told his friends and co-workers. We now work with 4 or 5 dozen of his current or former co-workers. That tells us they are happy with our services and they trust us. If you would like to have more confidence in your [...]