The biggest question for 2019 is whether or not the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates too far. During each of the last two cycles, the Fed stopped raising rates shortly before the economy fell into recessions. Will this time be different? “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Mark Twain Between 1999 […]
Ten Years and 2,100 Points Later
Ten years ago this week, the S&P reached its lowest point during the depths of the Financial Crisis. From its peak in 2007, the stock market fell an astonishing 57%, costing investors trillions of dollars. There are varying estimates for just how much was lost, but one estimate I read a while back put the […]
Recent Housing Data and the Business Cycle
The partial government shutdown delayed the release of a slew of economic data. For the first two months of the year, economists have been flying with one-eye closed due to the lack of data. Yesterday, we got a batch of data on the housing market that shines some light on how the economy ended 2018. […]
A Batch of Bad Data: Retail Sales & Jobless Claims
The big headline today was December’s retail sales report that was downright awful. Retail sales fell 1.2% in December, which was the biggest one-month drop since September of 2009. Keep in mind, one bad report doesn’t make a trend, but it was enough for Wall Street to mark down their expectations for GDP during the […]
Spare Me Your Predictions, Show Me Your Process
It seems like a daily occurrence that somebody, somewhere spills ink about how the next recession is imminent. Today it was Paul Krugman, predicting that a recession is near and the Fed has little in the way of policy tools to combat it. Should we all run for the [investing] hills? To be fair, Krugman […]