April 5, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal “It isn't so much that hard times are coming; The change observed is mostly soft times going.”  – Groucho Marx This is big. Lights on. Matters. First, the news, then the explanation. On March 5, ISDA submitted a letter to the Board of [...]Read More >

  March 29, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal “It's a wonderful thing to be optimistic. It keeps you healthy and it keeps you resilient.”  – Daniel Kahneman   Daniel Kahneman passed away this week. Kahneman was an Israeli-American author, psychologist, and economist notable [...]Read More >

  March 20, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal “While Powell seemingly can't wait to cut rates to take some edge off the current levels, at the end of the day, about half the committee wants 3 cuts this year and about half put its dots in for 2, about where we stood before the meeting in terms [...]Read More >

  March 15, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "Easy money, wrote Hazlitt, creates economic distortions… it tends to encourage highly speculative ventures that cannot continue except under the artificial conditions that have given birth to them. On the supply side, the artificial reduction of [...]Read More >

  March 8, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "Emotional Intelligence grows through perception. Look around at your present situation and observe it through the level of feeling." – Deepak Chopra   I've been in Park City this week at the annual WallachBeth 2024 Winter Symposium, [...]Read More >

  March 1, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "When we talk about the bond vigilantes calling the government to task, we’re talking about this. The government needs to fund itself, and the task is getting more challenging." ­­– Steve Blumenthal, On My Radar Feb 23, 2024 I want to reiterate a [...]Read More >

  February 23, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "The U.S. deficit has been going up, and it's been going up because of higher interest rates. $17 trillion of treasury bonds come due in the next three to six months. The average interest rate on them is well below where interest rates are [...]Read More >

  February 16, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "Sustainable bull markets don’t start with a Shiller P/E of 33 and full employment." ­­– Jeremy Grantham, GMO Several observations on the current technical picture of the US stock and bond markets: overvalued, overbought, and over [...]Read More >

  February 9, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "Based on dozens of measures that include valuations, internals, overextension syndromes, and numerous technical, fundamental, and cyclical gauges we’ve developed over time, we estimate that current market conditions now ‘cluster’ among the [...]Read More >

  February 2, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "Adventure is the invitation to common people to become uncommon."  "There are only four things you can do on skis: Turn right, turn left, go straight, or sell them." ­­– Warren Miller The last couple of weeks, we've been looking into the [...]Read More >

  January 26, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "I hope there are days when your coffee tastes like magic, your playlist makes you dance, strangers make you smile, and the night sky touches your soul. I hope you fall in love with being alive again." ­­– Brooke Hampton I really like the [...]Read More >

  January 19, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "I think $700 billion could default… The lenders are going to have to do things with them. They’re going to be selling. It’s going to be a generational change in real estate coming, end of 2024 and all of 2025. We will be talking about real [...]Read More >

  January 12, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "The art of investment is the discipline of inaction in the absence of a good opportunity, but aggressive action when one is identified." ­­– Li Lu Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data came in just above consensus estimates earlier this [...]Read More >

  January 5, 2024 By Steve Blumenthal "Another massive beat on the latest US labor-market data, with wages actually increasing to 4.1% year over year from 4% in November. The market reaction is as you'd expect - yields higher, with fewer rate cuts being priced in for 2024." ­­– [...]Read More >

  December 29, 2023 By Steve Blumenthal "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.” ­­– Ralph Waldo Emerson In a tribute to the era of big bands, big egos, and even bigger hair, "Rock of Ages" is a Broadway musical set to the backdrop of classic rock [...]Read More >