Gun Laws Do Not Prevent Crime The answer to preventing mass killings is not more gun control; Stephen Paddock would have been able to get those guns regardless of whether or not owning them was illegal. He would have found a way to get those guns. Heroine is illegal, cocaine is illegal - there are all kinds of things that are illegal - it doesn't stop people from getting them. Criminals Will Break Any Law If you are a criminal, you are going to break the law, and clearly, if you're willing to mu...
Oct 03, 2017•36 min
Record Highs in the Markets This is the last day of the third quarter; S&P 500 and NASDAQ ended at record highs. I am not sure what made the Dow miss an all-time record - it was close but no cigar. Other broader measures did hit record highs to close out the quarter, in fact, Donald Trump was tweeting about the record highs in the stock market earlier this morning. Of course, when we were having record highs under Obama, it was a bubble and it didn't matter, but now that it is his bubble, it...
Sep 30, 2017•38 min
Estate Tax is Out Today President Trump announced some of the details of his highly-anticipated tax reform, which is really not tax reform, it's more of a tax cut masquerading as a reform. I would say the best part about it is the elimination of the estate tax. That, in and of itself is a very substantial improvement. That tax should not be there; it raises very little revenue but does tremendous damage to businesses. It impedes the ability of a family business to be passed down from generation....
Sep 28, 2017•34 min
Yellen Putting On an Optimistic Front Everybody is watching Janet Yellen this week; the Federal Reserve met and did not raise interest rates - no one expected them to raise interest rates. But Yellen did offer a more optimistic assessment on the economy than most people were expecting. In fact, she shrugged off all these hurricanes and did not mentioned all the money that will have to be borrowed to repair all the destroyed infrastructure. No Rate Hike She's not worried at all about the impact o...
Sep 22, 2017•37 min
Market Anticipates Quantitative Tightening The market continues to rise; people are excited about the Fed meeting that start tomorrow and concludes on Wednesday. Nobody expects a rate hike and there's not going to be a rate hike, but what everybody is looking forward to is the Fed outlining its strategy for quantitative tightening. Shrinking the Balance Sheet The Fed hasn't actually used those words yet; I use that term because what they are going to do is they are going to shrink their balance ...
Sep 18, 2017•38 min
President Trump Courts Dems on Tax Reform I think the catalyst for the rise in the stock market today is enthusiasm over President Trump's announcement that he is working with the Democrats and is close to a deal on tax cuts. So that if he can't get something done with the Republicans, he will get it done with the Democrats and, one way or another, he's going to accomplish this major tax reform. Major Shift to Make Economy More Productive But of course, it's not going to be tax reform; it's goin...
Sep 15, 2017•42 min
A Huge Risk-On Day The markets rallied all over the world. Everything was up. All the foreign markets - European markets, Asian markets, rallied. It was a huge risk-on day. Stocks went up and bonds got clobbered. Yields rose on government bonds, the 10-yr. out to the 30-yr. Insurance Rates Going Up There will be a lot of pressure on insurance companies to pay claims for both recent hurricanes and where's that money coming from? It's got to come from the markets. It is just not sitting there in a...
Sep 12, 2017•41 min
Trump said Government was Too Stupid When Donald Trump was originally elected President, I was out there warning, that budget deficits under the Trump Presidency are going to be huge. Donald Trump never ran as a fiscal conservative or a Libertarian. He didn't say government was too big, he just said it was too stupid. He promised just to be smarter. He didn't say he would make government smaller, only that he would make it more efficient. He would do a better job of using big government than pol...
Sep 08, 2017•29 min
Threats from Hurricane Irma and North Korea After a long holiday weekend the DJIA fell 234 points this Tuesday. Finally we have some kind of negative reaction in the stock market to the bad news. Over the weekend we got news that North Korea had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb, and now we know that Hurricane Irma, which is now listed as a category 5 hurricane, is one of the biggest, if not the biggest hurricane ever in the Caribbean. Anything Can Happen It looks like it is going to go right ...
Sep 06, 2017•39 min
Nonfarm Payroll Report Fails to Impress Today is the first Day of September; and since it is the first day of a new month, and it is a Friday, we got the nonfarm payroll report. The consensus forecast was about 180,000 jobs. The number came in at 156,000, well below the consensus. To make it worse, they revised down the prior 2 months by about 20,000 jobs each. The unemployment rate notched up from its 16-year low. When Donald Trump, the candidate called 5% unemployment the greatest hoax on the ...
Sep 02, 2017•36 min
$1,300 Was a Coiled Spring Beneath the Market We've been flirting with that $1300 level all year; I've been talking about all the resistance that was up there and every time the price of gold got near $1300 it was met with a tremendous amounts of selling, there was a lot of supply. But as I have been saying on this podcast, the demand was building. It was a coiled spring beneath the market. The channel was narrowing. The distance between the $1300 resistance and the support kept getting narrower...
Aug 29, 2017•24 min
The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast I appeared the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast while on my trip this week to the West Coast. I first appeared on his show about 3 years ago, and since then the popularity of his podcast has really exploded. A couple of million have already listened to my most recent appearance. I was on for 3 hours and I did almost all of the talking. Huge Reaction to Minimum Wage Discussion If you look at the YouTube video you'll see a tremendous amount of reactions, both positive ...
Aug 26, 2017•47 min
Economic Ignorance I happened to watch a YouTube video Politicon 2017 Live Stream Schapiro vs Uygur and I want to address only the part of the discussion which was about taxes. Ben Shapiro did a good job, but a much stronger case should be made about Uygur's statements which were economically ignorant. False Logic One of the points that Cenk Uygur made during the debate is that high taxes are good, that we have more prosperity with higher taxes, and lower taxes are bad for the economy. In his op...
Aug 18, 2017•36 min
Press Wants Freedom of Speech as Long as It Fits Their Agenda One of the few rights left to us in this country is the freedom of speech. If we don't defend speech that we find offensive, someone else will find your speech offensive and move to silence you. Political correctness, is evolving into the Thought Police via the mainstream media. In particular, President Trump's reaction to the events in Charlottesville is being portrayed as a defense of White Nationalists over Black Lives Matter. Noth...
Aug 16, 2017•53 min
Speculative Asset Bitcoin is a digital risk asset, not a currency. If you own bitcoin you have an asset, but it is not a safe haven. A safe haven is an asset that is not likely to go down in comparison to another speculative investment. Bitcoin has been extremely volatile; it happens to be going up, but the price is based on speculation. Does anybody believe that bitcoin has less downside risk than the stock market? Not a Currency Bitcoin is not used as currency. They trade in bitcoins for dolla...
Aug 14, 2017•48 min
Fire and Fury Not Strong Enough Donald Trump's saber-rattling against North Korea continues. Yesterday the President was asked to clarify his statement about the "fire and fury" and he came out and said that that wasn't strong enough; he was really sugar-coating it. What he really means is something worse - if anything his statement was not strong enough. Again, today Trump issued another threat that N. Korea had better be careful, if they say anything if they will regret it big time, so the lev...
Aug 11, 2017•38 min
Elimination of Deductions for State and Local Tax - "SALT" Tax reform is the one remaining 2018 Republican campaign issue, and the argument over "SALT", or the elimination of deductions for state and local taxes. In general that would be state income tax or state property tax. In some states that do not have income tax, you are allowed to deduct your sales tax, although that is a more complicated deduction. In the wealthier states on both coasts, tax payers rely on those deductions. The Mortgage...
Aug 10, 2017•32 min
Trump Jumps to Tweet on Mediocre Jobs Numbers This morning the Labor Department released the July Non Farm Payroll numbers and Donald Trump tweeted,"Excellent Jobs Numbers just released - and I have only just begun." Many job stifling regulations continue to fall. Movement back to USA!" What is excellent about these numbers? If you look at the household survey reveals that we created 393,000 part time jobs during the month, and we lost 54,000 full time jobs. Candidate Trump complained about thes...
Aug 05, 2017•32 min
Trump Takes Credit for Dow Jones 22K We have an all-time high in the Dow Jones today, closing above 22K for the first time ever. Donald Trump did not tweet about this today, although yesterday he did put out a tweet that the market was about to hit 22,ooo; of course he is claiming credit for it. In fact he pointed out in his tweet that when he was elected, the Dow was 18,000 and not it is 4,000 points higher and of course he is claiming credit for it. He says the media is ignoring it. They are r...
Aug 03, 2017•34 min
Obamacare Repeal Charade Over The whole charade surrounding the repeal of Obamacare is finally over. The most recent attempt, labeled "Skinny Repeal" was a big fat lie. They weren't really repealing anything, leaving the essence of Obamacare and accelerating Obamacare's death spiral. If Congress had repealed the employer mandates and the individual penalties but left everything else the same, then the number of healthy people making the irrational decision not to buy insurance would skyrocket an...
Jul 29, 2017•45 min
Summary: The Dow and the NASDAQ set new record highs today as the dollar sold off near the end of the day to close at yet another low for the year. Remember, the dollar index rallied 6% between the election and the Trump inauguration. It has now fallen more than 10% since inauguration. Many currencies are at two-year highs. The Australian dollar is at a 2-year high, certain commodities are at a 2-year high, copper broke to a 2-year high; oil prices have been strong. Oil was up about $.80 today a...
Jul 27, 2017•31 min
Summary: My recent trip to Las Vegas for The Freedom Fest provided some interesting lessons. My observations that we are paying more for less were illustrated by the theft of my luggage, as there are no more luggage security checkers in baggage claim exits. Also, for the first time, major Las Vegas hotels are charging from $15 - $18 for parking. This is causing hotel valet workers to lose money, as customers are less likely to leave a generous tip (or any tip) if they are already paying quite a ...
Jul 25, 2017•36 min
Summary: More weak economic data today sent the U.S. stock market to record highs; at least the Dow and the S&P hit new records. NASDAQ not quite, but very close. The dollar hit a new low for the year. The dollar index, settling in at 95.10, right on the low for the day. That's down .63. Some of the other currencies are strong. Aussie Dollar Strong The Aussie dollar was up about 1.3% on the day; one of the strongest of the currencies today. The Aussie dollar is very close to a 2-year high. T...
Jul 15, 2017•31 min
Summary: There are market indicators of a major top as illustrated by the Blue Apron IPO , as it represents the failure of a very weak company attempting to raise money my means of an IPO when the market may have lost its steam. The stock is trading at $7.14, down from its initial $10/share offering. Wall Street has lost control of this IPO. A smaller bank actually issued a price target of $2/share. The point is that they brought the IPO to the market and they could not keep the air in the bubbl...
Jul 12, 2017•29 min
Summary: There wasn't much of a market reaction to this Nonfarm Payroll report; the dollar index was only up .2% on the day. It closed up flat on the week. The Canadian dollar closed at a 10-month high against the dollar. Also bond prices continue to fall; this is a bad week if you own bonds, worldwide. Yields are rising across the board. The trend looks like we are about to break down in the bond market and break out in yield. Gold Market I think it is the weakness in bonds and the backup in yi...
Jul 08, 2017•29 min
Summary: One of the key differences between Americans and citizens of other countries is that in most nations of the world, individuals gradually won freedoms and privileges from a monarchy. In the U.S., however, we started with all of our rights. Then, Americans created government by surrendering some of their power, empowering government. These rights are spelled out in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution . Free Stuff Rather Than Freedom We have government not to give us stuff, but to secu...
Jul 06, 2017•38 min
Summary Independence Day is a great American holiday, but it fills me with joy and sadness. I love to commemorate what America was, and the whole idea of what made America different. Once we declared our independence in 1776 the people created a government. We the people had all the power and we surrendered some of our power to form a limited government. The government was a creation of the people and they ceded some power to the government. This was unique. As a result of this limited governmen...
Jul 06, 2017•27 min
Summary: Blue Apron Holdings IPO The Blue Apron Holdings IPO today is reminiscent of the dot com boom. The market is saying the 5-year old company is worth close to $2 billion. This IPO represents a "down round" which may occur after a company suffers a decline in valuation after it has received initial rounds of capital investment. The initial offering was $10/share, and by the closing bell it only managed to close at $10. This stock may go below $10 as early as tomorrow, as many investors were...
Jun 30, 2017•32 min
Summary: Once again the solution doesn't work. As with the Democrats' solution, the penalties are too low. In both the House and the Senate, trying to force people to buy insurance won't work because the penalty for not buying insurance is not stiff enough. The reason they aren't doing that is, politically, it is a losing proposition. This is why the Republicans never should have touched this issue. If they did not have the guts for outright repeal, they should have never done anything. They sho...
Jun 28, 2017•36 min
Summary: Let the SS ObamaCare Ship Sink The Republicans in the Senate finally unveiled their version of ObamaCare Repeal & Replace. It's very heavy on replace, but there really isn't any repeal. They are replacing it with something that may even be worse. Regardless, we still should let the ObamaCare ship sink while it's called the SS ObamaCare. Senate Bill Leans Toward Socialized Medicine The House already passed their version . The Senate version is even worse; it takes away all penalties ...
Jun 24, 2017•45 min
