Category: Business Columnists

Buy the Dips Is Becoming Sell the Rips, yet Good Investment Opportunities Abound

Commentary We have most likely begun a cyclical bear market. Such things used to be fairly commonplace, along with the lesser 10–15 percent or so corrections within broad stock up-trends. Particularly since the start of the pandemic two years ago, the Federal Reserve has all but outlawed such moves with its BIG thumb on the…


The Long Sordid Tale of Government Waste

Commentary For the past year, Democrats in Congress have been trying to pass the president’s Build Back Better plan. As described by the administration, it’s the boldest investment in America since the New Deal. It started with an insane $3.5 trillion price tag. The bill stalled thanks to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema…


A Massive Market Returns From the Dead, and You Should Be Glad

Commentary It’s the forgotten “master of the investing universe.” Once the most important market on the planet. I’m talking about the U.S. Treasury market. U.S. Treasuries have, for decades, been considered the safest, most reliable market in the world. So much so, the yields treasuries paid were referred to as the “risk-free” rate of interest….


Markets to the Fed: The Truce Is Over!

Commentary It was nice while it lasted. For months throughout 2021, the Fed wrestled with a brewing inflation storm—first trying to downplay it by calling it transitory, hen little by little changing their tune, talking about the possibility of tapering their quantitative easing (QE) program, and occasionally suggesting that higher rates might be in order….


Powell the Pivoter Cannot Now Pivot Back to a Dove

Commentary  The current Fed Chair Jerome Powell is perhaps best known for his quick pivots from hawkish back to dovish and vice versa. Maybe he is just too dependent on the prevailing winds of the current economic data. Or, perhaps more accurately, he is most swayed by the performance of the stock market. In either…


The Fed, Money Supply, and Stock Prices

Commentary  In 1977, I co-authored the book, “Winning With Money,” explaining the relationship between the money supply and stock prices. Our work confirmed that while money supply changes impact the economy, six-to-nine-months later, the lag is much shorter for stock prices. Understanding this relationship between money and stocks prices is essential for investing in stocks….


Will the Stock Market Crash?

Commentary  The answer to this crucial question is Yes … and No. Yes, because this is the most over-valued stock market in history, underpinned by the second-highest level of leverage in history, and both these factors have ultimately led to a crash in the past. No, because the factor that has driven the market since…


What the IPO Surge Reveals

Commentary American finance has seen a powerful march to market. Initial public offerings (IPOs) of formerly private firms surged in 2021 and show signs of sustaining that trend into 2022. Each firm, of course, makes its own decisions about its unique circumstances and products, but the broad picture carries two clear though seemingly contradictory signals….


Big Tech + Big Government = Big Trouble

Commentary After the world’s brush with financial Armageddon back in 2008, a new phrase entered the lexicon that described financial institutions that were so big, so deposit-heavy, so interwoven into the global economy, that should any one of them ever run into financial trouble—a bailout would be justified. They were called Too Big to Fail…


How Long Will Starbucks Last in China?

News Analysis Starbucks offers an “American lifestyle experience” for $4 a cup. But buying American brew—one of the only ways the Chinese can vote—is threatening the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). People’s Daily is the official newspaper of the CCP. If Xi Jinping wants an opinion published, it would appear there. So when People’s Daily publishes…