October 12, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “I want to reiterate my headline: managing debt crises is all about spreading out the pain of the bad debts, and this can almost always be done well if one’s debts are in one’s own currency. The biggest risks are typically not from the debts themselves, but [...]Read More >

October 5, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “Typically the worst debt bubbles are not accompanied by high and rising inflation, but by asset price inflation financed by debt growth. That is because central banks make the mistake of accommodating debt growth because they are focused on inflation and/or [...]Read More >

September 28, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “The key to handling debt crises well lies in policy makers’ knowing how to use their levers well and having the authority that they need to do so, knowing at what rate per year the burdens will have to be spread out, and who will benefit and who will suffer [...]Read More >

September 21, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “I am writing this on the tenth anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis in order to offer the perspective of an investor who navigated that crisis well because I had developed a template for understanding how all debt crises work. I am sharing that template [...]Read More >

September 14, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “Crashes are never caused by poor earnings or lower economic growth. Those things cause recessions, but they do not cause crashes. One thing, and one thing only, can cause a crash: forced selling.” – Matt Maley, The Real Reason for the 1987 Market [...]Read More >

September 7, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “[A] grain falling on a red spot can, by domino-like action, cause sliding at other nearby red spots.” – Mark Buchanan, Ubiquity, Why Catastrophes Happen I woke up early last Saturday morning and found John Mauldin’s Thoughts from the Frontline newsletter on [...]Read More >

August 31, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “The best insurance policy against missing big market moves is to have more than one online brokerage account.” – Barron’s, March 11, 2000 If you feel it appropriate, share this piece with your client(s).  It's about late cycles, investor behavior and risk [...]Read More >

August 24, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal "With solid household and business confidence, healthy levels of job creation, rising incomes, and fiscal stimulus arriving, there is good reason to expect that this strong performance will continue….” – Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in Jackson [...]Read More >

August 17, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “The deflationary period we’ve been in has come to an end.” – Louis-Vincent Gave, Founding Partner & CEO, Gavekal Research Last March, I shared with you GaveKal Research’s “Four Quadrants Framework.”  Louis-Vincent Gave presented at the March 2018 Mauldin [...]Read More >

August 10, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “The way to build long-term returns is through preservation of capital and home runs.” “Everyone sort of lives with their rulers in the past and doesn’t look at coming changes.” “Earnings don't move the overall market; it's the Federal Reserve Board... focus [...]Read More >

August 3, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “I don't want to scare the public, but we've never had QE. We've never had the reversal. Regulations are different. Monetary transmission is different. Governments have borrowed too much debt, and people can panic when things change.” – Jamie Dimon, Chairman [...]Read More >

July 27, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “One last thing – as for this debate about the yield curve needing to invert to warrant a recession call, the reality is that at the ultra-low levels of rates, bloated central bank balance sheets that are in the process of gradually unwinding, and in the face of [...]Read More >

July 20, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal "Curiosity leads to learning. As you expose yourselves to newer and richer experiences; you learn different things—some good, some bad—but all important to the journey of life. It is what you learn is all that matters." – "Prashant" in John Mauldin's “An [...]Read More >

July 13, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “The elephant in the room is and has always been the Federal Reserve since it has a very large say in what liquidity conditions are going to look like. I see the Fed continuing to raise rates, albeit gradually, and to also continue in its Quantitative Tightening [...]Read More >

July 6, 2018 By Steve Blumenthal “The major signs that would herald the beginning of the next recession are not yet in place. Unemployment is low and likely to decline further; wages are rising, but not sharply; the Federal Reserve is tightening, but real interest rates are zero; inflation is [...]Read More >