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 >

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 >