Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, it was announced that Speaker McCarthy and President Joe Biden had reached a deal to resolve the debt ceiling impasse that has been weighing on the market for the past few weeks. That was not a surprise as neither side seriously wanted to entertain the possibility of the United…
The U.S. Consumer Continues To Get Crushed
In multiple previous posts on this blog, I have shown evidence that the American consumer is in dire straits. This is at least partly due to inflation, which has been running at more than 4% for two years now: This would not be a problem if wage growth was keeping up with the rapidly-rising cost…
Could The Oil Sell-Off Reverse? IEA Says Yes!
Over the past several months, we have seen crude oil decline in price in stark contrast to several other things in the market. Indeed, West Texas Intermediate crude oil is down 7.10% year-to-date: This is in stark contrast to the stock and bond markets, which have both shown surprising strength this year. This is unsurprising…
American Producers Cutting Natural Gas Production, Glut
As everyone reading this is no doubt well aware, natural gas prices have declined significantly year-to-date. As of the time of writing, natural gas at Henry Hub is down 47.81% since January 1, 2023: In fact, the current price is back to levels that we have not seen since the pandemic drove down the price…
The Market Continues To Look Overvalued
A few months ago, I published an article on this site that showed how the American stock market appears to be overvalued at its current level. That continues to be the case today and in fact, by some measures, the problem is now worse than it was earlier in the year. After all, the S&P…
Traditional Energy Continues To Look Undervalued
A few months ago, I published a blog piece over at Seeking Alpha that discussed how the traditional energy industry appears to be dramatically undervalued in the current market environment. This is partly due to the rising importance of environmental, social, and governance ratings at major fund houses such as BlackRock (BLK), which generally discourage…
Inflation Is Higher Than You Think
Over the past few months, politicians and the mainstream media have been applauding the fact that inflation has “finally been brought under control.” The headline data certainly reflects this, as the consumer price index has fallen from a peak of 9.1% year-over-year in June 2022 to 5.0% in March: However, this is somewhat misleading. As…
Gas And Oil Prices Rise, Likely To Continue
On Tuesday, April 18, 2023, fuel price tracking company GasBuddy reported that the average price of gasoline in the United States reached its highest price this year. The company stated that the average price of gasoline in the United States is now $3.65 per gallon, which represents a $0.076 increase over the past week. This…
Weakness In The Petrodollar Could Benefit Gold
Over the past few weeks, I have been seeing a number of articles on various sites discussing how the U.S. dollar’s dominance as the world’s reserve currency could be under attack. Over the past several years, I have even made similar comments through articles such as these: I have done a few more articles than…
Signs Of A Worsening Jobs Market
Over the past few months, I have been writing about how the jobs market has been somewhat resilient despite the fact that there are numerous signs of economic weakening. We are now finally starting to see job numbers pointing to an impending recession. ADP And BLS Data The first recent data point comes from Automatic…