July 20, 2021 Last week we focused on the housing market. We would be remiss if we did not bring up the energy markets as well, as the price of oil has been in the headlines this year. It is always interesting when looking at history and how modern times have changed. For example, last […]
Read MoreJuly 13, 2021 To put it mildly, we have seen a quite interesting housing market through the pandemic. During most recessions, falling incomes and tighter guidelines cause the housing market to slow and lead to stable or lower housing prices. During the Great Recession, it took almost a decade for the housing market to recover. […]
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July 6, 2021 Last month the Federal Reserve Board spoke loudly. They actually had the audacity to suggest that they expect to raise rates shortly. Define shortly? Sometime in 2023! That is literally two years from now. Years ago, the Fed never telegraphed what they were inclined to do in advance. Now they are signaling […]
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June 29, 2021 It seems every year, market analysts come up with a new term to describe the economic scenario. In the 1970’s it was “stagflation” – a mixture of a stagnant economy and elevated inflation. In the 2000’s we had the economic “conundrum” — a diversion in the relationship between lower interest rates and […]
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June 22, 2021 No, we are not talking about the pandemic here. We are actually referring to the May jobs report, which shows almost 560,000 jobs created. This number was seen as disappointing. If you look at it from a year-to-date standpoint, we have added close to 2.5 million jobs this year—or an average of […]
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June 15, 2021 We have had quite a wild ride across our planet during the last 15 months. A word-wide pandemic was followed by a sharp recession. As the pandemic wore on and wore many of us down, certain segments of the economy prospered and others remained stuck in recession. At one of our darkest […]
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June 8, 2021 We were looking for some “bounce-back” numbers in the employment report last Friday. We believed that the stage was set with the progress of our vaccination program having a real effect on the number of COVID cases in our country. As of the middle of May, cases had dropped approximately 90% from […]
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June 1, 2021 Last month we saw a pretty disappointing jobs report. The quarter of a million jobs added was actually quite strong for a normal month. However, for the era of economy recovery from the pandemic-induced recession, it fell short. Which brings us to an important point to consider. In economics, nothing happens in […]
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May 11, 2021 Every month the jobs report is closely watched. But the April report has some special significance. Late last year the jobs recovery stalled as cases of COVID soared. But lately we have had better news. In March we added over 900,000 jobs. Another economic stimulus package was passed, and the economy’s first […]
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