A couple of data points crossed this morning—import/export inflation still running hotter than polite company wants to admit, and regional manufacturing perking just enough to keep the “soft landing” crowd chirping. Meanwhile, geopolitics continues its slow-motion stumble toward something larger, with just enough “good news / bad news” headlines to keep futures levitating on fumes. … Read More
News -a driver of immediate Future – doesn’t really matter, anymore. The reason is simple: in the X-post facto world, all pretext of logic has saddled up and left town. We are reduced to underlying (with emphasis on second syllable there) narratives duking it out in click-time. All of which doesn’t explain the why of how we got … Read More
Stand by for one of the greatest marketing collisions in history. Because today we’re serving up a rare mix of menace, amusement, and method. Before we high board into dueling fairy talks, some mood-setting from Paul Simon, shall we? Paul Simon – Slip Slidin’ Away (Official Audio). That’s because In new escalation, US to blockade … Read More
Taken as a whole, the following perspectives were conspiring toward a future of muddle-through, or collapse. Not the lerast of which? US and Iran end ceasefire talks without an agreement | AP News And the hell of it? The luck of birthright will play as big a role in your future as all the hustle, crypto, … Read More
We won’t mince here: this weekend’s ChartPack is the ChartPack from hell. Forty-seven pages of charts, cycle work, war-risk crosscurrents, and a market setup that looks a whole lot less like “soft landing” and a whole lot more like “keep your helmet handy.” Save a spot in the ER for your wallet this week, while … Read More
This will be very much highlights and on point. Because I’ve been up since 2 AM writing next week’s Peoplenomics report as pieces of the Four Track Human model continue to fall into place. Focus in ShopTalk Sunday will be “Yard and Garden Engineering” which is where systems thinking and calorie-quest collide with a side of … Read More
There are enough moving pieces today that a simple listing on the whiteboard should keep you “in the game.” But, speaking of “games” let’s play… Breaking and Broken: GDP: “Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025 (October, November, and December), according to the … Read More
So yes, there’s a lot of reading today — close to a hundred pages between the ChartPack and the Focus — but that’s because the times are not simple, even if the headlines want to pretend they are. If you want the fast-food version of reality, the free web is full of it. If you … Read More
Breaking or Broken? Durable Goods Just out: New Orders New orders for manufactured durable goods in February, down four of the last five months, decreased $4.4 billion or 1.4 percent to $315.5 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This followed a 0.5 percent January decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.8 percent. Excluding defense, … Read More
Most of Easter – except for the scrubbing part which we’ll get to – was spent in this week’s Peoplenomics report. Which turned into a 46-page marvel of Depression research, how times have changed, and what “everything breaking at once” could look like. I’m exhausted. Since I promised to have shorter reports, let’s just hit the … Read More
Ah, the glory of an Easter Sunday, huh? I like getting a bit of down time. (Actually slept in until 4:46 AM!) Except, as you might expect, my idea of down time is a little rough around the edges. Mainly, it means a change from head work to thing work. The workaholism never changes – … Read More
This holiday Peoplenomics report begins with the new ChartPack and a simple but important point: market risk has shifted. The immediate focus is next week’s trading setup, but the larger question is even more important — what do the next six months, the next year, and even the next decade begin to look like if … Read More
The Gospel of BLS hath been spoke: Both the unemployment rate, at 4.3 percent, and the number of unemployed people, at 7.2 million, changed little in March. These measures also changed little over the year. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for people who are Asian (3.7 percent) decreased in March. The jobless … Read More