January 31, 2020 By Steve Blumenthal “The US economy has experienced its slowest recovery from a recession in the post-World War II era, and the longer it lasts the more evidence there is that normal cyclical patterns are missing. And their absence means market participants shouldn’t rely on [...]Read More >

January 24, 2020 By Steve Blumenthal “We’re just in the craziest monetary-fiscal [policy] mix in history. It’s so explosive, it defies imagination. It reminds me a lot of early ’99 [when inflation was low and stock markets were soaring]. The difference is the fed funds rate was 4.75% — today [...]Read More >

January 17, 2020 By Steve Blumenthal “The last five major global cyclical events were the early 1990s recession — largely occasioned by the U.S. Savings & Loan crisis, the collapse of Japan Inc. after the stock market crash of 1990, the Asian crisis of the mid-1990s, the fabulous technology [...]Read More >

January 10, 2020 By Steve Blumenthal “We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good. Even now, Charlie (Munger) and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children [...]Read More >

January 3, 2020 By Steve Blumenthal “First, investors should understand that the present combination of low interest rates and elevated stock market valuations implies low prospective returns on the entire portfolio mix. Last week, our estimate of prospective 12-year nominal total returns on a [...]Read More >

December 20, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “I will go to my grave believing that the financial crisis happened because of bubbles made by easy money.” – Stan Druckenmiller, Former Chairman and President, Duquesne Capital (Bloomberg Interview) I’ve seen three outstanding buying opportunities in my [...]Read More >

December 13, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “It hasn’t proven to be temporary. It hasn’t proved to be reversible without massive injections of liquidity. Which means that structural issues are playing a role.” – Mohamed A. El-Erian Chief Economic Advisor, Allianz (on Bloomberg TV) Let’s open this [...]Read More >

December 6, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “Given the high valuations I see, plus these divergences between many different indices, I am aware that many bull markets have ended with a rally similar to what we have seen since August.” – Ned Davis Founder, Ned Davis Research (CNBC) A few years ago, my [...]Read More >

November 22, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal "So the reason why we raised interest rates [in late 1999-2000] is because—generally is because we see inflation as moving up—or, in danger of moving up significantly, and we really don’t see that now." – Jerome H. Powell, Chair, Board of Governors of the [...]Read More >

November 15, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers I keep a dashboard of valuation indicators in my research folder, organized neatly by type. Right now, they are high. But how high and what does that mean? We’ll [...]Read More >

November 8, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “In a world where growth is meager and monetary policy less effective, governments will have a much greater effect.” – Joe Kalish Chief Global Macro Strategist, Ned David Research On my way into Philadelphia for a breakfast meeting yesterday, I listened to [...]Read More >

November 1, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “Cycles are inevitable. Every once in a while, an up- or down-leg goes on for a long time and/or to a great extreme, and people start to say ‘this time it’s different.’” – Howard Marks The Federal Reserve cut rates a quarter percent on Wednesday. Chairman [...]Read More >

October 25, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal "Experts discern a pattern: a louder-than-usual howl against elites in countries where democracy is a source of disappointment, corruption is seen as brazen, and a tiny political class lives large while the younger generation struggles to get by." - Declan [...]Read More >

October 18, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “If we pay attention to cycles, we can come out ahead. If we study past cycles, understand their origins and import, and keep alert for the next one, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel in order to understand every investment environment anew. And we have [...]Read More >

October 11, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “I believe that we are on a classic journey that we haven’t seen in our lifetimes but has happened many times before, most recently in the late 1930’s. It is being driven by the same big forces that drove the dynamics in the late 1930’s. In particular, now, [...]Read More >