October 4, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “ There's a way to do it better - find it."    - Thomas Edison " It's kind of fun to do the impossible."   - Walt Disney Fresh signs of a global economic slowdown have driven equity markets lower this week and driven expectations for a Fed rate cut higher.  [...]Read More >

September 27, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “When I look at markets, I first start to create a long-term big picture. I look at structural trends in economics, in demographics, in politics, etc. etc. And then I try to analyze the business cycle and were we sit in the cycle.” – Felix [...]Read More >

September 20, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “I’m not saying that the past is prologue in an identical way. What I am saying that the basic cause/effect relationships are analogous: a) approaching the ends of the short-term and long-term debt cycles, while b) the internal politics is driven by large [...]Read More >

September 13, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “…nothing is new under the sun. Almost everything we see happened before at some point in human history, though of course with different details and magnitude. So we can’t throw out precedent completely. Well, except for negative interest rates. That really [...]Read More >

September 6, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “To refer to a personal taste of mine, I’m going to buy hamburgers the rest of my life. When hamburgers go down in price, we sing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ in the Buffett household. When hamburgers go up in price, we weep. For most people, it’s the same with [...]Read More >

August 30, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “We advise the U.S. side not to underestimate the Chinese side’s ability to safeguard its development rights and interests. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!” – Commentary in the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China May 29, [...]Read More >

August 23, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “When real yields are low or negative, investors’ returns are not commensurate with risk, so investment falls along with productivity gains and growth prospects.” – Lacy Hunt, Ph.D. and Van Hoisington, Hoisington Investment Management Company I begin this [...]Read More >

August 16, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “The experience of the Great Recession and its aftermath revealed that a lower bound on interest rates can be a serious obstacle for fighting recessions. However, the zero lower bound is not a law of nature; it is a policy choice. The central message of this [...]Read More >

August 9, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal Foreign exchange volatility is not new in modern finance, though relatively speaking it has been reasonably muted in recent decades compared to preceding ones.  Uncertainty around foreign exchange suppresses business investment in that the ability to repay [...]Read More >

August 2, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal Like the pine trees linin' the windin' road I've got a name, I've got a name Like the singin' bird and the croakin' toad I've got a name, I've got a name And I carry it with me like my daddy did But I'm living the dream that he kept hid Movin' me down the [...]Read More >

July 26, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.” – Mario Draghi, President, European Central Bank (July 26, 2012) Still reeling from the financial crisis, central bankers were scrambling to [...]Read More >

July 19, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “I think now is a good time 1) to look at past paradigms and paradigm shifts and 2) to focus on the paradigm that we are in and how it might shift because we are late in the current one and likely approaching a shift.” – Ray Dalio, “Paradigm Shifts” (July 17, [...]Read More >

July 12, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “[I]f you could say well give me one rule to follow as an investor, just one, it would be, do the things that are unpopular. Everything else being equal, the things that are popular are overpriced the things that are unpopular are underpriced.” - Howard [...]Read More >

June 28, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “You should invest more when the tickets in the bowl are in your favor. You should invest less when they are against your favor and what determines the mix of the tickets in the bowl largely where we stand in the cycle.” - Howard Marks Oaktree Capital and [...]Read More >

June 21, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “A lot of investors feel it isn’t hard, they just don’t know how. Because the more you think this is easy, the more you persuade yourself that you can take the heat. And then, the sooner the oven gets hot, the more shocked you are and the worse you get burned. [...]Read More >