December 2017

The aggregate economy is doing well. Let’s view this strength through the lens of three vital areas of the economy. We will look at housing, employment, and retail sales. First, new home sales hit a decade high. Recessions do not begin as home sales are hitting multi-year records. Read More

September 2017

While macrocast^™ has remained constructive all year, it’s worthwhile to review other economic models for comparison. The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) is highly respected and has a good long-term track record. The latest signal shows the LEI continues to make new all time highs. Read More

August 2017

In this issue, we “Chart the Course” by looking at key charts regarding the US economy, inflation, and market performance. We find that the data in many of the following charts is consistent with what we see in macrocast^™. We hope you enjoy these, and will publish our next traditional Macro Musings at the end of September. Read More

July 2017

Our review of asset class performance shows international investments from stocks, bonds, and real estate outperformed their US equivalents. Commodities continued to struggle while gold is quietly having a good year. The S&P 500 returned 9.3% in the first half of 2017, with a minor correction of 2.8%. Read More

June 2017

Economic Growth remains consistent. It has been strong enough to avoid recession, but not strong enough to create significant inflation pressure. With the tax reform and the potential for stimulative fiscal policy delayed, we are not projecting an increase or decrease from the average GDP growth of the past several years. Read More

May 2017

The latest data suggests the economy is comparable to where it has been the past several years. Growth is slow but consistent enough to keep unemployment down while limiting inflation. We are not seeing anything in the data that suggests growth is about to pick up or fall-for that matter. Read More

April 2017

Our review of asset class performance shows that international stocks were the big winners in the first quarter, along with technology stocks. The dollar weakened, commodities slumped, and the so-called “Trump Trade” took a breather. The market was up over 5% in Q1.  Read More

March 2017

We have been seeing several articles suggesting emerging markets (EM) could outperform US markets again, after lagging the past five years. Some of this chatter stems from the simple fact the EM is leading the way so far in 2017… Read More

February 2017

The strength in macrocast^™ is being driven by economic data, which remains constructive. Counterintuitively, the biggest concern with the economy is that the data has come in better than expected for some time. When data comes in better than expected, economists raise their targets, and future data often disappoints.  Read More

January 2017

macrocast^™ was consistently positive throughout 2016. If we go back to the beginning of last year, the market sold off immediately, correcting 14% from January 1 until the middle of February. During this period, our macrocast^™ score did the opposite, increasing from +6 at the end of December to +10 in January…Read More