Executive Summary It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Thus, this week’s missive has fewer words than normal and more pictures (please scroll through 1600’s to current). Understanding history and the historical patterns of bubble manias is important to preparing for 2021. [...]
Executive Summary On the one hand the public is told Congress must pass a massive stimulus bill providing cash to individuals, or businesses and the economy will fail. On the other hand, pundits state the economy is strongly rebounding based on the soaring stock market. Which story [...]
Watch The Replay Bob Cremerius presented this ILIT webinar on December 15th, 2020 to a select group of invite-only professional colleagues. If you were unable to attend, you may watch the replay here.
Executive Summary As year-end approaches, I decided to review where we are and compare 2020 to historical times. The year began with weakening growth in both corporate earnings and gross domestic product followed by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic and closures. To fight the negative impacts, [...]
Executive Summary It never ceases to amaze me how financial pundits give such credence to financial projections which more often than not are materially wrong. Yet in the short run, the stock market tends to react to such misleading data. Probably the best example is to look [...]
Executive Summary In this week’s missive, I give both a visual and an audible example of how over-valued the current stock market bubble is. First the visual of Tesla’s market capitalization and sales versus the other 50% of the auto industry. Next the audible of how speculators [...]
Executive Summary The onset of COVID-19 led to business lockdowns and an abrupt halt to economic activity. Through the CARES Act several programs were implemented to assist with unemployment benefits due to government mandated shutdowns. However, many of these are expected to expire on December 26. Currently [...]
Executive Summary As a quick follow up to last week’s missive, the déjà vu continued this Monday with another COVID-19 vaccine headline. Markets jumped on headlines, not financial data. While the S&P 500 Index is comprised of the 500 largest U.S. public companies, the Russell 2000 Index [...]
Executive Summary Last Monday the stock market soared upon news that Pfizer had developed a COVID-19 vaccine, and this Monday stock futures were skyrocketing again due to news of a Moderna vaccine. According to a quoted article in the Wall Street Journal, there are issues with the [...]
Executive Summary Last week 785,500 people filed for first-time unemployment benefits. Since Covid-19, the number of weekly unemployment claims filed have exceeded the previous all-time record of 695,000, each and every week. (See first graph) Also, one can see the labor force participation rate never recovered much [...]