70 Words

The Friday File: At the 100th Saratoga Sale earlier this month, 135 yearlings sold for $55,155,000. The average price, $408,556, just shy of the 2019 record of $411,459. The median price was $350,000, equaling the record set in 2019. The…

While the current inflationary surge is largely economy reopening related and thus temporary, there’s a caveat. Strong job growth, improving household formation, higher wages, and house prices that are booming, may stimulate rent inflation. After averaging 3.5%/year in the years…

With an increase in the debt ceiling still awaiting congressional attention, the bond market is pricing in default risk. 1-month T-Bills are yielding 0.0203% while 3-month T-Bills are 0.0583%, over twice as high, a yawning gap given that they are…

Gimpy Gold On 8/15/71 President Nixon ended convertibility of the US dollar into gold. Since, gold has appreciated from $35/oz to $1,800/oz, an 8.2% annualized rate of return. Had you instead invested in the S&P 500 and reinvested dividends, your…

Reliable Rates With tapering of the Fed’s monthly purchases of $80 billion in Treasuries and $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities fast approaching, will this raise interest rates? Unlikely, and the primary reason is the federal budget deficit, which was $3.1…

The Friday File: The longest English word is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. It is a noun that refers to a lung disease resulting from inhaling very fine silica or quartz dust. Most importantly, it is 45 letters long. In second at 36 letters,…

Y-o-Y July CPI came in at 5.4%, the same as last month, it’s first non-rise since 11/20. Adding to the good news, M-o-Month price increases fell from 0.9% in June to 0.5% in July. Better yet, core CPI be it…

While there’s talk of substantial wage growth, some perspective please. Since monthly inflation, as measured by the CPI, began visibly rising in 2/21, it’s rise has exceeded the monthly rise in average hourly earnings every month! This means real wages…

The bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill that recently passed in the Senate will boost GDP just marginally because it includes only $550 billion in new spending to be disbursed over five to eight years, much of which will be paid…

July payrolls rose a strong 943,000, and June’s number was revised up 88,000 to 938,000, pushing the unemployment rate down from 5.9% to 5.4%! This suggests that through mid-July the Delta variant had no negative impact. Moreover, the broadest measure…