January 17, 2025 By Steve Blumenthal "Because my game has been to bet on the markets and because the debt markets drive just about everything, I have been obsessed with studying debt dynamics for decades. I believe that if you understand these dynamics, you can do very well as an [...]Read More >

  January 10, 2025 By Steve Blumenthal "The investor who says, ‘This time is different,’ when in fact it’s virtually a repeat of an earlier situation, has uttered among the four most costly words in the annals of investing." – Sir John Templeton Howard Marks is a legendary figure in [...]Read More >

  January 3, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "It is more important to know what will happen than when it will happen, because it is impossible to forecast with precision the timing of critical events." – Arthur Zeikel, former Chairman of Merrill Lynch Asset Management and co-author of [...]Read More >

  December 27, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "Value investing is the discipline of buying securities at a significant discount to their underlying value and holding them until more of their value is realized. The concept is simple, but the execution can be challenging." – Seth Klarman, [...]Read More >

  December 20, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria." – Sir John Templeton An essential and prescient quote for the current state of play. Investor and GMO investment and asset management [...]Read More >

  December 13, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "Earnings don't move the overall market; it's the Federal Reserve Board... focus on the central banks and focus on the movement of liquidity... most people in the market are looking for earnings and conventional measures. It's liquidity that [...]Read More >

  December 6, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "If I have been able to see farther than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants." - Sir Isaac Newton Despite current indicators suggesting a low probability of an imminent U.S. recession, it's prudent to remember that [...]Read More >

  November 22, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "If you are not aggressive, you are not going to make money, and if you are not defensive, you are not going to keep money." - Ray Dalio, Founder, CIO Mentor, and Member of the Board Bridgewater Associates It's hard to believe we’ve landed on [...]Read More >

  November 15, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble; it's what we know that ain't so." - Will Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) Today, let's put some hard numbers into play and then game theory the economic implications going forward. [...]Read More >

  November 8, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "This is much bigger than politics; this is a cultural moment."  — Dr. Pippa Malmgren The results are in. The stock market took off like a rocket ship, and interest rates shot higher. Like it or not, it's primarily red across the board. Trump is [...]Read More >

  November 1, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "The Great Powers Index is a very thorough report on each of the leading 24 countries, showing readings for several different categories of well-being with many measures of each category.  It also uses these measures to provide a prognosis for the [...]Read More >

  October 25, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "A failure to correct unsustainable fiscal trajectories poses major risks to growth, inflation, and financial stability." — Augustine Carstens, General Manager, Bank of International Settlements, October 22, 2024 Yes, precisely what he [...]Read More >

  October 18, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "When you're easing into a meltup in financial markets, and we have the fiscal policy we have going forward, it's certainly a risk. And I just think it's a mistake not to be taking that risk into account." — Stanley Drunkenmiller, Bloomberg [...]Read More >

  October 11, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "Bottom line, yields across the curve are at the highs of the day with the 10 yr yield now at 4.07%, the highest since late July. While the Fed’s aggressive rate cut, the China stimulus news, and the better-than-expected jobs report are likely [...]Read More >

  October 4, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "This beautiful deleveraging can only be done in countries that have most of their bad debts denominated in their own currencies and have most of the debtors and creditors as their own citizens, which is the case for China. Doing a deleveraging in [...]Read More >