August 3, 2021 The economy is getting stronger and consumer optimism is rising. We have had a string of positive economic reports which tell us that we are moving in the right direction. For example, retail sales have indicated that consumers are spending, we added close to one million jobs in June and the first […]
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July 27, 2021 The Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee meets this week and there is little to no chance they will change interest rates. As a matter of fact, it was big news surrounding the previous meeting because they indicated that they will “consider” raising rates as early as 2023. Thus, you would think […]
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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 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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May 4, 2021 If you are reading the forecasts being released for this year, the optimism for a strong rebound has hit unprecedented highs. There has been plenty of data to support such optimism. This data has included a gain of nearly one million jobs in March. Add plenty of stimulus dollars to the equation, […]
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April 13, 2021 Our previous commentary spoke about the importance of inflation with regard to the future of interest rates. We follow with a discussion regarding the threat of inflation. First, we must understand that all sectors of the economy do not experience inflation at the same rate. For example, today we see inflation in […]
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April 6, 2021 Inflation, inflation, inflation. This year, rates have been headed up and we keep hearing this word being uttered again and again. Rates have been rising because there is an elevated threat of inflation. The question is – why are these two concepts linked together so often? Today, we would like to reintroduce […]
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March 30, 2021 The markets are famous for reacting to what they think is going to happen, rather than what happened in the past. In this regard the markets are an indicator of the future. Like any indicator, the markets are not always accurate, but they are an indicator that bears watching. For example, for […]
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March 16, 2021 During the Great Recession, a little more than a decade ago — the value of real estate was hit significantly. We spent ten years recovering as values reached pre-recession levels and then some. During the COVID-induced recession of last year, home appreciation actually accelerated. Just recently, CoreLogic confirmed that house values rose […]
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