You can sign up to receive John's weekly free macro-economic letter here. Now, on to the letter... A Little Harder, by John Mauldin 5-13-22 Habib & Stockton: Mortgages in Recession Resource Security Panel Gavekal Times Three Friedman: Transition Point Bianco, Boockvar, and [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: So Goes the Year? - 02-1-2022
By John Mauldin Posted: January 29, 2022 You’ve heard the old stock market adage, “As goes January, so goes the year.” If so, 2022 will be a wild ride. Of course, in this context “wild” doesn’t necessarily mean a loss. But it could, and given the well-documented human tendency to buy high and [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: Inflation by the Numbers - 12-20-2021
By John Mauldin Posted: December 17, 2021 Milton Friedman famously said inflation is “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” He was right but that short statement doesn’t fully explain how inflation works. It has other causes, too. The period in which he did [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: Logistical Sandpiles - 10-18-2021
By John Mauldin Posted: October 15, 2021 At the risk of overusing a favorite metaphor, today we’ll talk about sandpiles. My past sandpile stories focused on financial crises. The same principle holds in any complex system, though. Everything works until suddenly it doesn’t. [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline – Inflation: More Transitory than Expected - 09-20-2021
By John Mauldin Posted: September 17, 2021 If the inflation numbers leave you scratching your head, join the club. The August data was especially perplexing. The Producer Price Index came in hot, up 8.3% in the last year, inviting 1970s comparisons. Obviously, our current situation is different [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: Ubiquity, Complexity, and Sandpiles - 08-27-2021
By John Mauldin Posted: August 13, 2021 “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” ―Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises Change happens quickly and, often, unpredictably. And as we will see, the unpredictable part is actually a mathematical principle. As in the [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: Year of the Gripping Hand - 01-11-2021
By John Mauldin January 8, 2021 This week’s letter is the first part of my 2021 forecast. There is simply too much to cover in one letter, and today we’ll start with the most important factor, a known unknown, that I think will be the driver for 2021. Before beginning, I want to make two [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: The Great Reset vs. The Great Reset - 11-23-2020
By John Mauldin November 20, 2020 In baseball, there is a situation where a base runner is sprinting to home plate and can’t see what is happening behind him. Totally focused on scoring, he doesn’t know if the outfielder is throwing a ball that will reach home plate first. That’s where we get [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: Great Reset Update: $50 Trillion Debt Coming - 09-26-2020
By John Mauldin September 25, 2020 Amid all 2020’s new problems, it’s easy to overlook the old ones. Yet they are still there and, like a silently spreading virus, silently getting worse. One such problem is debt, and specifically government debt. All debt shares one common characteristic. A [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: Stall Speed Economy - 09-21-2020
By John Mauldin September 18, 2020 When Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown in 1781, tradition has it that the British band played an old English children’s folk tune, “The World Turned Upside Down.” If buttercups buzz’d after the bee, If boats were on land, churches on [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: Light in the COVID Tunnel - 09-4-2020
By John Mauldin August 14, 2020 If you ever think you just can’t win, I know how you feel. I’m labeled both a doomsayer and a Pollyanna—sometimes in reaction to the same letter. In fact, I am neither. I used to be the “muddle-through” guy who acknowledged difficulty but expected eventual [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: The Second Great Depression… But Not Really - 08-17-2020
By John Mauldin August 14, 2020 "It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours." —Harry S. Truman, 33rd US President In recent weeks, numerous commentators started to suggest the US and the world are entering a depression. For some areas of the [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: The Stumble-Through Economy - 06-15-2020
By John Mauldin June 12, 2020 We are on the horns of a dilemma, caught between the Scylla and Charybdis, a rock and a hard place, the devil and the deep blue sea, the anvil and the hammer. The walls are closing in. We’re in a tight spot. All those metaphors (I could list more but will spare [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: Reflection Week - 05-18-2020
By John Mauldin May 15, 2020 I knew this letter’s topic months ago. It was going to be a review of the Strategic Investment Conference, which would have just concluded fabulously in sunny Scottsdale. Well, something intervened. Coronavirus precautions kept us from having an in-person [...]Read More >
Thoughts from the Frontline: Five Viral Lessons - 05-11-2020
By John Mauldin May 8, 2020 We live in truly historic times. “There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen,” says a quote usually attributed to Vladimir Lenin. It certainly fits now. For thousands of years, people who lived through what we call “history” didn’t [...]Read More >