July 22, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “Because most everyone wants most everything to go up and because there is a drug called credit that produces both upswings and a byproduct depressant called debt, there is a cycle of accumulating debt liabilities and debt assets that is followed by the reducing [...]Read More >

July 15, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “From 2008 until recently the Federal Reserve and other central banks kept interest rates abnormally low. They did this because it is the time-honored central bank playbook. Make borrowing cheap and you can generate the kind of economic activity that spurs [...]Read More >

July 8, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “We’re now on a path to raise rates half a percent at a time until rates reach an arbitrarily determined, neutral level of around 2.5–3%. This gentle response is akin to trying to clear out your snow-covered driveway with an ice cream scooper.” – David Einhorn, [...]Read More >

July 1, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “Adjusting for inflation, first half S&P 500 down 25-26%, NASDAQ down 34-35%, Bitcoin down 64-65%. That was multiple compression, next up earnings compression so maybe halfway there.” – Michael Burry @MichaelJBurry If quantitative easing helped the stock [...]Read More >

June 24, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “Do not, do NOT invest in the present; the present is not what moves stock prices, change does.” “It's not about whether you are right or wrong, but about how much you make when you are right, and how much you lose when you are wrong.” – Stanley Druckenmiller, [...]Read More >

June 17, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “The risks of a debt bubble breaking and the rest of an equity bubble breaking have simply not been understood by our Federal Reserve since Paul Volcker. They are incredibly naive. They haven't even got a clue. They're not even interested in the idea. Bernanke [...]Read More >

June 10, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “This was the greatest closing panel in the 18-year history of my conferences. Even better than the closing panel food fight between Lacy Hunt, Neil Furguson and Richard Fisher in 2019.” – John Mauldin, Mauldin Economics and CMG's Chief Economist and Co-Portfolio [...]Read More >

June 3, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “The Fed is attempting to regain its credibility. There is a big risk that inflationary psychology becomes embedded.” – Felix Zulauf, Owner and President, Zulauf Asset Management “I was wrong about the path inflation would take,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen [...]Read More >

May 27, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal I'm in Texas this week for business, golf, and due diligence. And I’m reflecting on the tragedy that happened here, and the senseless violence our country has endured recently. I’m thinking of the families that lost their children and loved ones, and thinking of [...]Read More >

May 20, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “I can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” ― Sir John Templeton, Templeton Plan: 21 Steps to Personal Success and Real Happiness There were a lot of thorns in the stock market this week. To put the recent [...]Read More >

May 13, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “We are in pre-recession, we are going into recession, and where the Fed goes from there I’m not sure.” – Dr. Lacy Hunt, Executive Vice President, Hoisington Investment Management The 2022 Strategic Investment Conference concludes today. In this missive, I’ll be [...]Read More >

May 6, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “MP3 reflationary policies produced massive injections of money and credit into economies, leading to high nominal growth, leading to self-reinforcing inflation, leading to a tightening of monetary policy which is now just beginning. Stagflation is the big risk and [...]Read More >

April 29, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “This is not the only time in his­tory that they’ve been be­hind, but they are strik­ingly be­hind. They need to catch up and do it in a sys­tem­atic and un­der­stand­able way.” – John Taylor, Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics, Stanford University, [...]Read More >

April 22, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “This is not the only time in his­tory that they’ve been be­hind, but they are strik­ingly be­hind. They need to catch up and do it in a sys­tem­atic and un­der­stand­able way.” – John Taylor, Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the George P. [...]Read More >

April 15, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “The focus on ‘peak’ headline numbers shouldn’t overlook that price increases are digging in and broadening.” – John Arthurs, Senior Editor for Markets, Bloomberg I'm writing you this morning from Snowbird, Utah. With around 20 inches of snow having fallen over [...]Read More >