The invisible hand of market forces steering our economy is still a corona virus. The economy contracted at a record 30+% pace when this pandemic spurred a national lockdown and when COVID metrics improved from late April to mid June we saw an improving economic scorecard as many cities slowly…
“Build it and they will come” (Field of Dreams) is a demand driven mantra that applies to the secular housing shortage today. The normal business world responds to shortages by rationing supply with higher prices until production can rise to meet demand. However, over the past decade the residential construction…
Don’t fight the Fed is a well worn adage that has proven its value once again during the COVID-19 pandemic as record injections of Central Bank (Fed) reserves coincided with a record run higher in our stock market. The Fed began its quantitative easing (QE) experiment when they printed a…
The family of crown shaped coronaviruses has been identified in humans since 1965, originally associated with the harmless common cold. With 7 known types of regal looking coronaviruses known to infect humans, the current COVID-19 cousin is most closely related to the Chinese SARS virus (or COV-2) that appeared in…
The record setting Bull market in stocks since 2009 had reached a parabolic climax in February. The 1st quarter culmination was particularly amazing in that the US economy had been slowing for months and the growing Covid pandemic had already shut down China and begun moving into the rest of…
Don’t Mess With Texas! Covid-19 is threatening Texans proud history of First Amendment expression. After more than 2 months of social distancing and thousands of shuttered businesses, Texas partially opened its economy in May and June. Thus it was not a surprise that Covid cases began rising in the Lone…
The 2.6% rise in April food prices was the largest monthly surge in 46 years! On queue, some forecasters blamed it on the Money Supply, Government debt and the Trillions of dollars our Central Bank (Fed) created out of thin air. Soaring grocery costs pale in contrast to the broader…
Covid-19 trends are critical to our health, economy and of course the stock market as we all struggle to determine future valuations in this historically volatile environment. After a huge 45% rally in stocks since the March 23rd lows, the market went into cardiac arrest for a day losing 6% in value…
Since the shortest Bear market ever transitioned into a record Bull market in March, there has been an insolvency impulse by small investors. Esurient equity buying behavior of pajama traders is being spurred by up to $5,000 a month of Unemployment and Care package money in the pockets of novice…
Consensus forecasts are never precise and during this historic health experiment inducing an economic heart attack to battle a pandemic, wide margins of error in expectations are unsurprising. Normally a forecast miss of 100,000 in payroll estimates is shocking, but adjectives are elusive when describing a consensus miss of 10…