Research & Insight

The striking aspect of the U.S. economy’s 2015 performance was weaker economic growth coinciding with a massive advance in nonfinancial debt. Nominal GDP, the broadest and most reliable indicator of economic performance, rose $549 billion in 2015 while U.S. nonfinancial debt surged $1.912 trillion. [...]Read More >

April 22, 2016 By Steve Blumenthal “In the time it takes to raise a child and pack her off to college, the world order that existed in the early 1990s has disappeared.  Some three billion people who once lived in sleepy or sclerotic statist economies are now part of the global economy.  Many [...]Read More >

By Steve Blumenthal April 20, 2016 S&P 500 Index 2103 The supply/demand indicator turned bullish this week.  The process looks at a smoothed total volume of declining issues versus a smoothed total volume of advancing issues, using a broad market equity index.  This indication is another [...]Read More >

April 15, 2016 By Steve Blumenthal “Seemingly logical, but as I’ve pointed out in recent years – not working very well because zero and negative interest rates break down capitalistic business models related to banking, insurance, pension funds, and ultimately small savers.  They can’t earn [...]Read More >

By Steve Blumenthal April 13, 2016 S&P 500 Index 2077 Notable this week is the 13-week Exponential Moving Average (EMA) line crossed above the longer-term 34-week EMA line.  Trend followers smooth the historical price performance and, when a shorter-term trend line crossed above or below, [...]Read More >

April 8, 2016 By Steve Blumenthal “The Fed may succeed in stretching this cycle until 2017.  But sooner or later it will have to grasp the nettle, and then we will discover how much monetary pain can be taken by a dollarized global economy with post-QE pathologies and total debt ratios some 36pc [...]Read More >

By Steve Blumenthal April 6, 2016 S&P 500 Index 2062 I thought I’d share an idea with you today: An advisor client asked me how I use the CMG Ned Davis Research Large Cap Momentum Index within a total portfolio.  My two cents is I like to have a systematic way, absent emotion, to raise [...]Read More >

April 1, 2016 By Steve Blumenthal  “Now these monetary institutions are expected to continue producing miracles. But their ability to repeatedly pull new rabbits out of their policy hats has been stretched to an increasingly unsustainable degree.” -Mohamed A. El-Erian, The Only Game in Town I [...]Read More >

By Steve Blumenthal March 30, 2016 S&P 500 Index 2055 Investor sentiment remains neutral (the rally from extreme pessimism is impressive).  The best buying opportunities tend to come at points of extreme pessimism and the best hedging opportunities tend to come at points of extreme [...]Read More >

March 25, 2016 By Steve Blumenthal “Corporate sector metrics have been disappointing of late... Companies are scaling back expenditures of all kinds (capital expenditures, hiring, and inventory-builds, for example), as their top-line revenues and earnings decelerate.  Though first-quarter numbers [...]Read More >