On Friday, esteemed economist Paul Krugman posted this tweet... This was after the government reported that both CPI and PPI came in hotter in August than expected, due to a rise in energy prices. As expected, Krugman was excoriated for the fact that people need all three of those items he wants to exclude from [...]
Most investors don't pay too much attention to the futures markets. They should. In 2022, the biggest gains made by portfolio managers were in the futures markets. Just as an example, Dunn Capital Management, which has been in the business of managing money as a Commodity Trading Advisor for 50 years, generated a 60% return in [...]
I'm of the opinion that inflation will be with us for awhile. With that in mind, I thought I would provide some thoughts on how to invest in such a market climate. First of all, if inflation remains high, and interest rates remain high, the overall stock market will underperform. Why? Because high interest rates [...]
It should be apparent by now that we are likely in a recession, as the Federal Reserve has finally embarked on a policy of tightening monetary policy to deal with historic inflation. Most pundits were shocked that 1st quarter GDP came in at -1.4%, as virtually no Wall Street economist predicted that much weakness. I [...]
If you pay attention to Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) who employ a trend following strategy to manage money for their clients, they will primarily tell you it is not a good idea to deviate from the trading system they are using. In other words, they have rules for entering positions and rules for exiting positions, [...]
Back in 1993, I was five years out of college, and while making decent money as a commercial real estate appraiser, I was still searching for something new. Just the year before I had started making decent money for the first time in my life, and this had carried over to 1993. So, I was [...]
Throughout this pandemic, the price action in the gold market has been quite interesting. In 2020, as the Federal Reserve turned up the money printing to full power, gold's initial reaction was to explode higher to new all time highs above $2,000 per ounce. But, the market didn't stay there for long and it quickly [...]
Given the surge of inflation we've seen this year, which was finally somewhat reflected in last month's CPI reading, which was the highest in over a decade, I've been pretty amazed by the rally that has gone on in Treasury Bonds since March. I'm old enough to remember that my very first mortgage came with [...]
Trend following is one of the more popular approaches to trading employed by money managers who trade primarily in the futures markets. It is also an approach employed by some hedge fund managers who trade in equities. With that in mind, I thought I would provide a primer on this important concept, as I feel it [...]
The Labor Department reported a net gain of over 940,000 jobs for the month of July, which dropped the unemployment rate to 5.4%. Economists expected a gain of 850,000 and a rate of 5.7%. As a result, there were some significant moves in the futures markets in the Treasuries, currencies and precious metals. Treasury prices [...]