January 02, 2014

Our Outlook for 2014 in Brief North America U.S.: As we have been saying, the economy in the U.S. will grow in 2014 by a surprising amount. Corporate spending is rising and employment will follow. We anticipate U.S. GDP growth real growth of 3.5 percent and inflation of 1.2 percent, for total Read more…

December 26, 2013

Investment Summary We remain bullish on U.S. stocks, and as we mention from time to time we remain bearish on the U.S. bond market. In our opinion, bonds have rolled over after a 30+ year bull market and we expect bond prices to continue to fall. Today, the differential between the U.S. Read more…

December 19, 2013

Private Infrastructure Investment Larry Summers didn’t get nominated to run the Fed, but he certainly still has the President’s ear. A piece of analysis we read recently pointed us towards an op ed article he wrote for the Financial Times in mid-October. That piece suggested two lines of thought which we Read more…

December 12, 2013

Small Banks Feel the Regulatory Squeeze Through our own contacts in community and regional banks, we have heard many accounts of the effect of post-crisis regulations on this sector of the U.S. economy. The chart below outlines the consolidation of the banking sector.         Source: Investor’s Business Daily Read more…

November 14, 2013

Why the U.S. Economy Will Strengthen We’ve been arguing that the U.S. economy will strengthen, and in the past week we got more indicators suggesting why this will happen. We’ve Been Bullish On U.S. Stocks As readers know, it is our view that we are at the stage of the economic Read more…

November 7, 2013

As the Trauma of 2008 Fades in the Rearview Mirror, How Much Longer Before Businesses Act in a More Growth-oriented Manner? U.S. business is growing slowly, and Business Confidence is returning. 1. The U.S. economy is poised to grow at a more rapid rate. The U.S. is not alone. In spite Read more…

October 24, 2013

Government Dysfunction Was Not Effective in Putting Much Fear in the Markets. Here’s Why. The investing world has gotten tired; it is especially tired of crisis. It is tired of financial TV’s network anchors babbling on about how bad the debt limit fight would be, about the looming disaster when the U.S. can’t Read more…

October 17, 2013

Global Economics Provides Reasons to Be Bullish, But Politics Poses Downside Risk As we write this, Capitol Hill’s partisan bickering and rancor have reached the conclusion we anticipated. We don’t believe that the conflict which monopolized headlines for the past two weeks is of lasting import. From our perspective, the fundamentals are Read more…