Synthetic Economic Growth?

Maybe it was something in the drugs the anesthesiologist was pushing Thursday, but an incredible moment of economic insight slapped me up-side the head on Friday while the market was tanking.What if economic growth is all simulated and nothing is as it seems. We get into that in today’s report, along with a few headlines … Read More

Saturday Special: Word From the Front

We have a number of things to cover this morning, so an unusual “Saturday Special.” ITEM ONE: Peoplenomics will likely be posted on Sunday. It’s only partly due to surgery. Turns out I’ve come up with a whole new paradigm for investing through all this disruption this week. And it’s taking a while to get … Read More

NOW FOR A CORRECTION–BUT WHICH ONE?

Although the Dow fell 200 and change THE DOW FELL 200 AND change Thursday, my concern now is that we are not yet to the break-point of this decline.  The reason may be understood two different ways: ONE, would be a discussion of how things look from the Elliott Waver perspective, while the other is … Read More

Coping: Time for Plan B

Well, that wasn’t much fun.  The eye surgery Thursday was something of a train wreck.   When I went into the operating room, the main idea was that they would put me under, I would have the old eye implant repositioned, and they would put a stitch in – and that would be that. Well, … Read More

Downer: Market’s Post-Fed, Pre-Facebook Blahs

If my brain is still functioning (a matter of some dispute, I’ll admit) we should have Facebook earnings out after the close today.  Not always, but often enough, when a company announces a new way to raise revenue a week or three before earnings, there is a reason.  Might be an unspoken message like “If … Read More

Coping: Rolling the Dice on Eye Surgery

Apologies that we won’t be putting up the usual post-Fed decision and what our outlook is until tomorrow (at the earliest) and Monday (I hope at the latest) but my eyes are about to “go done” for some offline maintenance today.  A little background, if you’re following the home game of “Trials of George” – … Read More

Standing by the the Fed Decision

With eye surgery tomorrow, wearing a baseball cap to control light, squinting a bunch and instilling eye drops prior to surgery, we are sticking with our core this morning:  Long wave prospects for the economy and our personal incomes. Years back, we evolved a strange view of fractured markets that comes down to this simple … Read More

Economic Fiction: Little Fed Riding Hood

(With apologies to Edward Everett Horton of Fractured Fairytales fame): Once upon a time, in a land not-so-far away, there lived a little girl named Fed. She lived in a small cottage, deep in the woods with a strange old woman who called herself Lady Liberty.  Often, this kind old lady would stand in a … Read More

Coping: UrbanSurvival Bug-out Vehicles

When my life-long chum was out last week, a topic went by in conversation that I meant to expand on in a column one of these days.  And today is that day. The topic is wheelbarrows and hand trucks. Now you would think that living in the East Texas Outback, as we do, that we … Read More

Worldview: U.S. Dept. of Insanity Working Overtime

This is, in military terms, one of those mornings which offers a “target rich environment” for the thoughtful man who’s just trying to get along in the world. It seems as though a particular kind of disease is making its way around the country – and although I haven’t found an “official name” for it, … Read More

Coping: Analysis of “Urban Intel”

A while back on our www.peoplenomics.com site, I outlined how a person – even with just a phone – could put together a very good “intelligence platform” and using it, you could throw out your time sink known as “the talking heads” of the newsporn biz. Not that they aren’t cute, quaffed, buffed, and rated … Read More

Are Fed Decisions “Tradable Events?”

It may seem like questing after a unicorn, but then again, that’s what a lot of investment research is:  Going through the trash (mountains of data) and thinking the Hope Diamond might be in there somewhere. But that’s how we roll around here:  While the longer views of history can be pretty good with enough … Read More

Fed Fascination: Wonder and Waiting

Provided my eyesight remains stable, while I await eye surgery next Thursday, I’ll be focusing on a bit of research that I haven’t seen much written about; namely the specific week before to three weeks after a Fed rate decision. One can intuit that there will be disappointment in the Fed decision next week, regardless … Read More