One IMF Saves the World, the Other Upgrades the World (Economy)
The 7th installment of the Mission Impossible movie franchise starring Tom Cruise should hit theaters this November, twenty-five years after the premiere of the first film (which featured the great Anthony Hopkins and the great line, “Mr. Hunt, this isn’t mission difficult, it’s mission impossible….
“When People Stop Being Polite, and Start Getting Real”
As if I wasn’t feeling old enough already with my 30-year college reunion on the horizon (COVID-19 permitting) the folks at Paramount+ go and reboot the original “Real World” as “Real World Homecoming: New York.” The original launched 29 years ago, and introduced many of…
Revisiting Our Bear Market Bottom Checklist
After dropping 35% from its February 19, 2020 peak of 3,393, the S&P 500 bottomed out on March 23, 2020 at 2,192, ending a selloff that included the quickest bear market in the history of the index and beginning the current bull market, which has…
Forget The Fox…What Do The Dots Say?
I don’t know if it still gets played, but not so long ago there wasn’t a kid’s birthday party, or it seemed any other social function one attended, where you didn’t hear the song “What does the fox say?” (that, and “Gangnam Style”). While my…
Don’t Call It A Comeback
Despite a down day Friday, it was a good week for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, with the index up more than 3% for the week. It would seem, after a rough few weeks, growth stocks are finding their footing. But we wouldn’t call it a…
The Sizzler Index
Confidence – consumer, small business and CEO – may be a soft or qualitative economic datapoint, measuring how people “feel” about their or their company’s economic prospects (as opposed to a hard or quantitative economic datapoint such as GDP), but it is an important datapoint…
The Big Battle Of 2021: Godzilla Vs Kong, Or The Market Vs The Fed?
We hope to return soon to activities that were untenable the past year, like going to the movies. While streaming services are great, nothing compares to watching a movie on the big screen, especially a larger-than-life Hollywood blockbuster like Godzilla vs. Kong, which is premiering…
When It Comes To US Debt, What Matters Most? The Amount? The Cost? Both?
We are not breaking any news when we write that US debt outstanding and the federal deficit are historically large numbers – on both an absolute and a relative basis – with the former now north of 100% of gross domestic product, or GDP. And…
“No Jules, It’s High-Yield Bonds”
There are two ways one can hope to understand the 1980s – you lived through that momentous decade, or you’ve seen the 1998 Adam Sandler classic “The Wedding Singer.” Trust us, Mr. Sandler got the decade more right than wrong: the clothes, the hair, the…
Tremble Before B.A. Baracus? Always. Tremble Before the Baa Spread? Not Today.
In the 1980s, no actor was tougher or more intimidating than Mr. T, who was made famous by his role as the hard-hitting Clubber Lang in Rocky III (“What’s your prediction for the fight? Prediction? Yes, prediction. Pain.”). Mr. T also starred in “The A…