September 16, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal "The process starts with inflation. Then it goes to interest rates, then to other markets, and then to the economy." - Ray Dalio, Founder, Co-Chief Investment Officer, and Member of the Bridgewater Board The process is in motion. Over the last several [...]Read More >

September 9, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains.” - Carl Safina The islands of Haida Gwaii, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, sit in the northern Pacific, off the coast [...]Read More >

Aug 26, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal "Anyone who thinks there’s a formula for investing that guarantees success (and that they can possess it) clearly doesn’t understand the complex, dynamic, and competitive nature of the investing process." – Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Group, LLC A short post [...]Read More >

Aug 19, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal "The Federal Reserve Acts were created to make the central bank of the United States a lender of last resort, not spender of last resort, a role Chair Powell confirmed in announcing the pandemic response program April 9, 2020.” – Dr. Lacy Hunt, Hoisington Research [...]Read More >

Aug 12, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal "U.S. consumers were soaking up all the cheap stuff the world had to offer: the asset rich, benefiting from decades of QE, bought high-end stuff from Europe produced using cheap Russian gas, and lower-income households bought all the cheap stuff coming from China. [...]Read More >

Aug 5, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal "MP3 reflationary policies injected massive amounts of money and credit into economies, leading to self-reinforcing high nominal growth, leading to self-reinforcing inflation, leading to an abrupt shift in market discounting from a benign monetary policy to a [...]Read More >

July 29, 2022 By Steve Blumenthal “The Yellen Fed was peak Fed. Peak, not in the sense of maximum balance sheet expansion, but in the sense of maximum faith and maximum zealotry that the Fed’s three toolboxes—short-term interest rates, balance sheet operations, and communication policy—could [...]Read More >

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 >