November 24, 2020 The prognosticators had promised Armageddon for the economy when the pandemic hit. Don’t get us wrong–it was plenty bad. But it was not as bad as many had predicted. The main reason for this resiliency? The real estate market. This is somewhat poetic justice because the Great Recession of 2008 was led […]
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November 17, 2020 The election is over, and the analysts have spent two weeks telling us what the results mean. The stock market rallied just before and after the election was called, but we don’t know if that was just the euphoria of uncertainty being removed, or the start of a longer-term rally — especially […]
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November 10, 2020 Your candidate won. Your candidate lost. You are confused like us because you have no idea who really did win. The real winner of any election in our country is democracy itself. The right to vote was exercised by a greater percentage of our populace than most anytime within the last one-hundred […]
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October 20, 2020 Could anyone had predicted one year ago that a major topic in Presidential debates and campaigns would revolve around mask-wearing? It has been that crazy of a year. We actually started the year with some semblance of normalcy, at least for a Presidential election year. But in late winter the entire world […]
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October 13, 2020 Previously, we mentioned that there will be no more monthly jobs reports before the Presidential Election. In addition, the Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee will not be meeting in November. Coincidentally, they meet again the day after the election. Thus, this period is sometimes known as the quiet period before the […]
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October 6, 2020 No, the Labor Department is not giving up on reporting monthly statistics. But the report released on Friday was the last reading on the job market that we will see before the election. It is said that the voters vote with their pocketbooks each year. Of course, this year the economic numbers […]
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September 29, 2020 Certainly 2020 will be a year that many of us will not forget. Pandemics, hurricanes and wildfires have shown us how much our environment can affect our economy and our daily lives. We certainly have faced all of these in the past, but it seems that this year they have been more […]
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September 22, 2020 No, we are not talking about shortness of breath and swelling. We are talking about how the markets might react to the news that a vaccine (or a few) are available. We have already seen how medical announcements have set off positive reactions. Now that we are further along in the process […]
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September 8, 2020 Together with Moody’s Analytics, CNN recently came out with a new measure of the economy. It is called the “Back-to-Normal” Index. The index hit a low point of 59% of normal in mid-April, which was during the height of the economic shutdown. By mid-August we were at 78% of normal. By our […]
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September 1, 2020 The pandemic seems to be raging forward and we have seen a series of historically adverse economic reports. The consequence of these reports can be summed up in two numbers. First, we had the loss of over 20 million jobs in one month. Secondly, the economy contracted by over 30% in the […]
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