July 30, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal "We're clearly on a path to a very strong labor market, with high participation, low unemployment, and wages moving up… it shouldn't take that long" [to get there]. - Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve Board In reaction to the 2008 financial crisis [...]Read More >

July 23, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “In its purest form, capitalism is an evolutionary process. Businesses that best adapt to changing conditions survive and grow. Typically, that means offering a product or service superior to current ones or giving consumers more choices. Weaker or poorly [...]Read More >

July 16, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “In highly indebted economies, additional debt triggers the law of diminishing returns.” – Dr. Lacy Hunt, Economist and Executive Vice President of Hoisington Investment Management Inflation, deflation––where are we heading? There has been no better [...]Read More >

July 9, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “While the talking heads on bubblevision seem to think that the move down in yields is borderline ridiculous, what they fail to take into account is the price signal that the bond market is sending us.” – David Rosenberg, President, Chief Economist, and [...]Read More >

July 2, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “We learned a long time ago… that you can’t make a good deal with a bad person.” – Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Investor, and Philanthropist As you ease into your long holiday weekend, I thought I’d share with you two presentations. [...]Read More >

June 25, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee, Martial Artist, Actor, Director, Instructor, and Philosopher A few days into my first job, Norman Tonkin pulled me into his [...]Read More >

June 18, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “Investing is the intersection of economics and psychology. The economics, the valuation of the business is not hard. The Psychology—How much do you buy? Do you buy it at this price? Do you wait for a lower price? What do you do when it looks like the world [...]Read More >

June 11, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “If it is not transitory, and I hope it is, then the weed of inflation grows and kills the garden.” – Richard Fisher, Former President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas “The weed of inflation.” Love the analogy. And the topic of inflation was at [...]Read More >

June 4, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." – Herb Stein, Senior Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute Over the last several On My Radar posts, I’ve shared my notes from the 2021 Mauldin Strategic Investment Conference (SIC). We’ll continue this [...]Read More >

May 28, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal "I will say it's about the most challenging time to talk about the market and the economy I can remember since I got in the business. I actually believe we are in the most unique set of economic circumstances that I've seen in my career, and certainly in the [...]Read More >

May 21, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “So my issue here is, in the future, as we go forward, if we look at Federal spending as a % of GDP, the CBO is saying if the 10-year Treasury goes to 4.9%, which is their normalized projection, the interest expense alone will be close to 30% of GDP every year, [...]Read More >

May 14, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “You have to go back 40 years – to Q3 1981 – to find a higher quarterly year-over-year wage growth number (+8.5%). This is not an anomaly. This is not a single quarter aberration. This is not transitory. This is four straight quarters of the highest wage growth [...]Read More >

May 7, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future!” - Niels Bohr, Nobel Laureate, Physics “Making predictions is tough, especially if it's about the future!” - Yogi Berra, Late Yankees Baseball Player, Manager and Coach Both quotes serve as [...]Read More >

April 30, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal “The question is, ‘Why do policies that have been shown to work so badly still get used so regularly?’ I have long maintained that Keynesianism is to Marxism and Socialism what diet cola is to the real sugary beverage. Hence, it falls neatly into the popular, [...]Read More >

April 23, 2021 By Steve Blumenthal "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." – Thomas Gray British Poet, “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” I’m fortunate to be on the receiving end of a great deal of research. Some I pay for; some is available to all of us. I’m particularly [...]Read More >