09-10-26 Iran remains the uninvited guest at America’s feast of prosperity, and it is proving an expensive one. As Iran’s planned escalation in the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz does its work, crude has vaulted above $104, diesel is knocking at a record $6 a gallon, and...
The world is not running out of oil. It is merely discovering the right fuel is stranded in the wrong place, trapped behind a closed shipping lane. The present danger is not simply a shortage of crude; it is a shortage of the security and confidence required to turn crude...
From Hormuz to the Treasury market, oil is again setting the price of risk Markets have rediscovered an old and inconvenient truth: the price of money and the price of energy are seldom strangers for long. When oil rises persistently, inflation expectations follow; when inflation expectations rise, bondholders demand compensation;...
The New Question Is Not Growth, but Return The headline of the week is imposing enough to remind historians of the architects of the old 1860s railroad trusts. In the great build-out of the American rail system after the Civil War, promoters frequently created construction companies they themselves controlled, then...
AI boom encounters the ancient discipline of cash flow Wall Street has rediscovered a old principle: money spent is not quite the same thing as money earned. Amazon and Microsoft reported results that were, in the customary fashion of the AI age, spectacular by ordinary standards and merely adequate by...
The Federal Reserve’s July 28–29 meeting is unlikely to produce an interest-rate increase. The more consequential question is whether Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will telegraph a September hike—or remind investors that threatening to tighten monetary policy is easy, but considerably harder to actually do it. Current market probability pricing puts...
Investors should prefer a market filled with skeptics rather than one dominated by strategists who increasingly echo the same bullish view. Consensus is often less a destination than a warning sign. ExecSpec agrees partially with Bank of America’s technical warning this week, even as BofA’s CEO continues to highlight the...
In the rythim of Bull markets, episodes of concentrated advance are always followed by periods of correction. The stock market rarely sustains leadership by a narrow cohort without pause. The headlong charge of Bullish investors into artificial intelligence and its semiconductor handlers has entered a necessary consolidation. The semiconductor complex, the...
Market participants have increasingly fixed their gaze on a small section of the investment stage. Today, investors remain transfixed by artificial intelligence, semiconductor valuations, and every diplomatic rumor drifting from the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the most consequential development for the American economy may be occurring in plain sight—at the neighborhood...
For much of the past four years, the stock market has resembled a Broadway production performed primarily by the seven actors, known as The Magnificent Seven. These hyperscale titans of silicon and artificial intelligence have been joined on center stage by dozens of supporting characters that support the AI buildout....
