Should the History of Multiple Expansion & Contraction Be Ignored?

2025-06-17T17:29:48+00:00June 17th, 2025|Categories: INVESTMENT|

Executive Summary The first chart below from Vetta-Fi illustrates the average of four separate valuation methodologies. Currently, this average is about 152% above the long-term average, which is slightly above three standard deviations from the mean. Statistically speaking, observed data falls within three standard deviations 99.7% of [...]

Was the May Jobs Report Strong?

2025-06-10T19:37:56+00:00June 10th, 2025|Categories: INVESTMENT|

Executive Summary As is typical with financial media, the 139,000 new jobs number released Friday was a celebrated “beat.” However, looking under the hood, one may conclude the “beat” is not indicative of the real employment picture. The first graph shows the Employment-Population Ratio dropped (first graph). [...]

Is the Stock Market Still Overvalued?

2025-06-03T19:06:52+00:00June 3rd, 2025|Categories: INVESTMENT|

Executive Summary In this missive I share five charts of various valuation methodologies for the current stock market. The first is an average of four different measures, which shows valuations over three standard deviations from the mean. Warren Buffet’s favorite, thus called the Buffet Indicator, is near [...]

How Serious is the Student Loan Crisis?

2025-05-28T16:42:31+00:00May 28th, 2025|Categories: INVESTMENT|

Executive Summary There are currently almost 43 million holders of student loans totaling $1.6 trillion (see first graph). Since the Covid relief measures as well as talk of loan forgiveness by the previous administration, many debtors were optimistic they would never have to pay. As of May [...]

Will Home Prices Fall Further?

2025-04-29T17:24:17+00:00April 29th, 2025|Categories: INVESTMENT|

Executive Summary Understanding residential real estate values vary by location, nationally home prices have begun to decrease. On a real, inflation-adjusted basis, values are down close to 10% from their 2022 peak (first graph below). Many have stated home values have not decreased along with the rise [...]

Should the U.S. Return to Sound Money?

2025-04-24T17:34:16+00:00April 23rd, 2025|Categories: INVESTMENT|

Executive Summary In 1971 President Nixon took the U.S. off of the gold standard. Since then, the U.S., like most countries, has operated with an “unbacked” or “fiat” currency. Then, the U.S. deficits began to explode (see first graph). In a perfect world, surplus years would be [...]

Are Consumers Waving a Red Flag?

2025-04-15T17:38:55+00:00April 15th, 2025|Categories: INVESTMENT|

Executive Summary Consumers drive our economy, and the Consumer Sentiment Index is a measure of how consumers are feeling. The April 2025 reading of 50.8 is the second lowest level on record (see first graph). As shown, that is lower than during the Technology Bubble burst and [...]

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