Episodes

Tuesday May 23, 2023
Too Long at the Fair
Tuesday May 23, 2023
Tuesday May 23, 2023
Time to retire the US/Emerging Markets barbell for a while

Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
The Places We Could Go
Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
Before getting into the US$ discussion, three quick things. First, despite strong US data in Q1 and Q2, the US still appears headed for a slowdown later this year. As shown below, many longer-horizon leading indicators point in that direction. Excess household savings are also being run down and should be 60%-70% depleted by the end of the year. Stable copper prices are one exception but its usefulness as a business cycle indicator is affected by China’s reopening and the copper intensity of the energy transition. Click here for a chart collection on these leading indicators.

Monday Apr 10, 2023
Frankenstein’s Monster
Monday Apr 10, 2023
Monday Apr 10, 2023
Frankenstein’s Monster: banking system deposits and the unintended fallout from the Fed’s monetary experiment; commercial real estate, regional banks and the COVID occupancy shock; the wipeout of Credit Suisse contingent capital securities; a market and economic update; and an update on San Francisco, which has experienced the weakest post-COVID recovery of any major city in North America.

Tuesday Mar 28, 2023
Growing Pains: The Renewable Transition in Adolescence
Tuesday Mar 28, 2023
Tuesday Mar 28, 2023
Renewables are growing but don’t always behave the way you want them to. This year’s topics include the impact of rising clean energy investment and new energy bills, how grid decarbonization is outpacing electrification, the long-term oil demand outlook, the flawed concept of levelized cost when applied to wind and solar power, the scramble for critical minerals, the improving economics of energy storage and heat pumps, the transmission quagmire, energy from municipal waste, carbon sequestration, a whydrogen update, the Russia-China energy partnership, methane tracking and some futuristic energy ideas that you can just ignore, for now.

Tuesday Feb 21, 2023
Winter Heating
Tuesday Feb 21, 2023
Tuesday Feb 21, 2023
The large language model battles begin: a look at the future of web search, conventional wisdom machines, hallucinating bears in space, some early application successes and how far they still are from humans.

Tuesday Jan 24, 2023
American Gothic
Tuesday Jan 24, 2023
Tuesday Jan 24, 2023
The Federal debt and how the Visigoths may try to break the system if no one fixes it

Sunday Jan 01, 2023
The End of the Affair
Sunday Jan 01, 2023
Sunday Jan 01, 2023
The affair with the market catalysts of the last decade is over now, and a new era of investing begins
View transcript with chart references

Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Holiday Eye on the Market: Non-Fungible Trainwreck
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Holiday Eye on the Market: the YUCs, the MUCs, FTX, the Gensler Rule and the Summers Rule

Wednesday Nov 02, 2022
A CH₄, HR4346 and mRNA-1273 Thanksgiving
Wednesday Nov 02, 2022
Wednesday Nov 02, 2022
In the October Eye on the Market I wrote about how in 6 of 7 post-war recessions, equity markets preceded the decline in profits, employment and GDP by several months at least. I also mentioned that the best indicator to follow was the ISM survey, which tends to coincide with the equity market bottom +/- 2 months. So, in the interest of thinking about when equities could bottom, the first chart below projects the ISM survey by looking at new orders and inventories. Using this crude approach, the ISM would bottom in the mid-40’s in December. If so, 3570 on the S&P 500 Index reached in mid-October could actually mark the low for the cycle; such a scenario should not be discounted entirely, and would be consistent with market history.

Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
Reruns
Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
Reruns: how equity declines precede the fall in earnings, growth and employment during recessions; new US semiconductor export policies on China and the clash of empires; and other press article extolling the renewable energy virtues of a country with little relevance for anyone else