December 11, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “You are driving forward and the road you are on ends.  You have come to what the British call a T-Junction.  You can transition to one of two alternatives.  But you cannot stay on the road you are on. One alternative is good.  It is a hand off from central [...]Read More >

December 4, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “The economy is like a machine.  At the most fundamental level it is a relatively simple machine.  But many people don’t understand it – or they don’t agree on how it works – and this has led to a lot of needless economic suffering... Seeing the economy and [...]Read More >

November 20, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “I have long made the claim that the transnational nature of Europe cannot be sustained. The divergent economic interests of EU countries, some with unemployment over 20 percent, some with it under 5 percent, meant that it was impossible for all of them to [...]Read More >

November 13, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “The European Central Bank is likely to continue negative rates, extend and enlarge QE, and acquire more balance sheet assets over time. ECB policy influences other nearby non-euro jurisdictions. Essentially, all short-term interest rates of [...]Read More >

November 6, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “U.S. interest rates are already zero. Japanese interest rates are zero also. European interest rates are negative. All of these central banks have printed trillions of dollars in their respective currencies under various QE programs. They are at the point [...]Read More >

October 30, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “Whatever the form of risk and risk measurement one uses, the important thing to know is that diversification reduces risk and can be used to reduce risks without reducing returns.” – Ray Dalio Ray Dalio’s “risk parity” or “all weather” investment process has [...]Read More >

October 23, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal  “Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it — even though others may hesitate or differ. (You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with [...]Read More >

October 16, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-CEO at The Carlyle Group, on Bloomberg TV several days ago, said, a U.S. recession is "inevitable."  "We have not really had a recession in six years," Rubenstein explained. "We came out of the last recession in June of [...]Read More >

October 9, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal "Facing up" to returns that will be less than the historical norm is the "single largest factor out there we have to deal with." – AQR’s Cliff Asness Valuation work seems to be showing up everywhere. Being the data geek I am, each month I like to take a look [...]Read More >

October 2, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal Investor Behavior – “You can bury your head in 10q’s and 8k’s and memorize a thousand facts about a company. You can become an expert on a given stock sector and establish relationships with all of the executives who run the show. You can build your own DCF [...]Read More >

September 25, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “This Fed, massively dominated by academic Keynesians, has demonstrated that the conditions for normalizing rates are far more stringent than many of us had been led to believe from the speeches of the FOMC members themselves. This is a Federal Reserve with [...]Read More >

September 18, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “The effect of years of zero interest rate policies has been to progressively drive investors toward securities of greater and greater risk, in the belief that “There Is No Alternative” (TINA). In every other market cycle across history, once an “overvalued, [...]Read More >

September 11, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “Of the nine market declines associated with recessions that started with valuations above the mean, the average decline was -42.8%. Of the four declines that began with valuations below the mean, the average was -19.9%” – Doug Short I don’t believe a [...]Read More >

September 4, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal At the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March 2015, China’s Premier Li Keqiang announced a growth target of 7 percent, acknowledging that “deep-seated problems in the country’s economy are becoming more obvious.” Three months later and thousands [...]Read More >

August 28, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe… We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been [...]Read More >