May 18, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal "The most important item over time in valuation is obviously interest rates… If interest rates are destined to be at low levels, it makes any stream of earnings from investments worth more money. The bogey is always what government bonds yield." - Warren Buffett [...]Read More >

May 11, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “At a time when the unemployment rate is well below full employment and inflation is accelerating, the Federal Reserve (Fed) is already on a course to tighten policy in order to cool the economy. Fiscal stimulus has only served to elevate concerns about economic [...]Read More >

May 4, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal "Excesses in one direction will lead to an opposite excess in the other direction." "Markets are strongest when they are broad and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue-chip names." "Bull markets are more fun than bear markets." - Bob Farrell (Rules #2, [...]Read More >

April 27, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens." Benjamin Disraeli We’ve been talking about a 3% yield on the 10-year Treasury as a line in the sand.  It may well be.  The important technical number is 3.07%.  A break higher and 4% is [...]Read More >

April 20, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “A Minsky moment is a sudden major collapse of asset values, which is part of the credit cycle or business cycle. Such moments occur because long periods of prosperity and increasing value of investments lead to increasing speculation using borrowed [...]Read More >

April 13, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “… I think Cohn resigning, was basically (telling us) that trade protectionists have taken over the economic thought process at the White House.  And I think that's really disturbing.” - David Rosenberg China’s President Xi Jinping, in a speech this week, [...]Read More >

April 6, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “The deflationary period we’ve been in has come to an end.” – Louis-Vincent Gave, Founding Partner & CEO, Gavekal Research China and Trump escalated the Trade War fist fight this week and the markets are having trouble digesting the dire news.  Is Trump [...]Read More >

March 29, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “I’m bullish on commodities because we are late cycle…  You can argue how late we are in the cycle but we are late cycle. The bond bulls will argue there is more room to run, but nobody is going to say we are in the first inning or the third inning of an [...]Read More >

March 23, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “There are two bubbles: We have a stock market bubble and we have a bond market bubble… What’s behind the bubble?  Well, the fact is that essentially we’re beginning to run an ever-larger government deficit. As a share of GDP debt has been rising very [...]Read More >

March 16, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “A period of stability induces behavioral responses that erode margins of safety, reduce liquidity, raise cash flow commitments relative to income and profits, and raise the price of risky relative to safe assets – all combining to weaken the ability of the [...]Read More >

March 9, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “Invest in things that have never happened before, hedge for regression to the mean and plan for the unimaginable.”  ― John Burbank, Passport Capital Mauldin Economics SIC 2018 “When the Fed moves in one direction they are ultimately laying the seeds for [...]Read More >

March 2, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal   “The greatest mistake of the individual investor is to think that a market that did well is a good market rather than a more expensive market.” - Ray Dalio  “Volatility is an instrument of truth, and the more you deny the truth, the more the truth will [...]Read More >

February 23, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”  ― Patrick Lencioni The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable I know I frustrate my team more often than I care to admit.  My [...]Read More >

February 16, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “Volatility fires almost always begin in the debt markets… Volatility is the brother of credit… and volatility regime shifts are driven by the credit cycle.” “When times are good and credit is easy, a company can rely on the extension of cheap debt to [...]Read More >

February 9, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “We are replaying an age-old storyline of financial bubbles that has been played many times before…” “This market’s current temperament feels so much like either Japan in 1989 or the U.S. in 1999. And the events that have transpired so far this January make [...]Read More >