Donald Trump survived what appears to be another assassination attempt yesterday. It would have been the second attempt on his life within two months.Trump was golfing at a course he owns in West Palm Beach, close to his home at Mar-a-Lago.Scouring the course two holes ahead of Trump, an alert Secret Service agent apparently spotted the barrel of a rifle protruding from a chain-link fence behind s...Read More

Today, we'll discuss something you don't hear much about, but probably should the American steel industry, particularly the ongoing saga of how Japan's Nippon Steel wants to buy an iconic American firm, U.S. Steel.What would this kind of politicking mean to American steel, if not the U.S. economy, more broadly? Let's tap this furnace, so to speak, but first, let's review the Trump-Harris debate...Read More

We understand the United States may soon bless Ukrainian missile strikes within the Russian interior with Western-supplied missilery.Thus the United States and its NATO understrappers would stomp across one of Russia's famous "red lines."Mr. Putin:Flight assignments for these missile systems can, in fact, only be entered by military personnel of NATO countries. Ukrainian military personnel canno...Read More

Professional obligations required us to view Tuesday night's presidential debate.The experience jackhammered home our central contention: Politics is disguised violence.There you had the two combatants, Harris and Trump, Trump and Harris.Perhaps one half of the nation is for the one. The second half is for the other.One will win and the other will lose.Thus roughly one-half of the population must...Read More

Next week in Frankfurt, I'm teaching "soft skills," which are interpersonal skills that enable effective communication, collaboration, and problem-solving. These skills cover a wide array of areas, such as presentation skills, negotiation skills, business writing skills, and other critical and transferable skills.I'm always looking for new games and simulations, as chalk-and-talk gets boring quick...Read More

Last evening Donald Trump and Kamala Harris stood before the American people... and debated.In an alternate reality, here is what transcribed.MODERATOR: Mr. Trump, before the pandemic you were spending record amounts of money and running up the national debt. Explain yourself.DONALD TRUMP: I never said I was Paul Ryan. I was a Democrat from New York City for most of my life. I found an issue that...Read More

The first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and potentially the only debate takes place in Philadelphia tonight, hosted by ABC News.There will be no live audience and neither candidate will release opening statements. Nor will either be allowed to ask questions of each other.Both of their microphones will be muted when the other is speaking, though ABC has evidently in...Read More

September strikes again!After just a handful of trading days, I'm here to report that this month is going much like many investors feared...Stocks are skidding lower at an alarming rate so far this month and traders are running for cover, buying up safety trades like utilities and consumer staples names as tech stocks and other popular plays continue to dive.The post-Labor Day malaise has been abs...Read More

As my longtime readers know, I'm a financial forecaster who prefers to focus on markets.But because politics can have such a large influence on markets, I can't afford to ignore politics. So I'll be focusing a lot on the November election in the next two months.Today we'll be looking at the candidates' platforms, along with polling results and methodologies.We'll also consider some wild cards that...Read More

A truly staggering quantity of content is aimed at predicting what happens next, aka the future, and justifies their prediction by referencing models that are presented as rock-solid predictive tools.The majority of these models are based on historical examples that have been distilled into models of “how the world works,” i.e. claims that these were not one-offs or outliers but exampl...Read More

"So did you meet President Reagan?" It was back in the 1980s. I was speaking with another Navy officer. We were both on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). And she had been invited to attend a state dinner at the White House.State dinners are a big deal, anytime and under any administration. An invitation to an event like that is a rare ticket in Washington, D.C. Even within the ethe...Read More

Here in Annapolis summer's fever has broken.Deep azure vaults high overhead... and refrigerating wafts steal in from the Chesapeake Bay.All is peace.Many analysts consider September a month of market peace. Look to October, they say.October is when the gales blow in.The Panic of 1907, the Crash of 1929, "Black Monday" 1987 all came barreling through in October.October's reputation is so villaino...Read More

I'm in Frankfurt, teaching a course on fixed income. It's my first time roaming through the city, though I've spent far too much time using its airport for connecting flights.I'm reminded of a piece I wrote a year ago that's worth revisiting, thanks to Germany's dire economic state. Once, a business titan reshaped Europe thanks to his riches and connections to the Habsburgs.No man had a more signi...Read More

Few events will affect investors more than the U.S. presidential election. The playing out of the campaign between now and Nov. 5 will obviously have an impact on markets as one side surges and the other side falters and vice versa.But the impact won't last for two months. It'll last for four years and beyond because the two candidates Trump and Harris offer radically different policies.It's e...Read More

Labor Day weekend is over, and the election is just over two months away. Is the U.S. economy in a recession as election season enters full swing?There's a mountain of data suggesting the answer is yes, or if we're not in a recession, we soon will be. We'll explore this data below but let's begin with the (supposedly) most powerful force in the U.S. economy the Federal Reserve.On Aug. 23, Fed Ch...Read More

This we learn from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics:American productivity has increased 62% since 1979.But average real hourly pay (adjusted for inflation, that is) has scarcely increased 17% across the same space.That is, productivity has run 3.5 laps around wages since 1979.Thus the average American worker finds himself a hamster upon a wheel... jogging largely in place.Here our co-f...Read More

The alliance between Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump is many things.But first it's an all-clear signal to a large class of less-than-fully brain-damaged Americans that it's OK to quit being insane. As you know, this election is no longer a battle between the political left and right. It's an epic struggle-session between the sane and the insane.You just witnessed the Democratic convention n...Read More

As the presidential election season heats up, I often find myself thinking, How could the outcome affect different areas of the market? You've probably asked yourself the same question at some point over the last few months, too.Before you get the wrong idea, no, I'm not about to wade into politics. That's not my focus.And I'm sure you'll be bombarded with political messages over the next few mont...Read More

"Extremism" is the new communism. Against this extremism stands "Our Democracy," prepared and fortified.Former British diplomat Mr. Alastaire Crooke:Just as the hegemonic West arose out of the Cold War era shaped and invigorated through dialectic opposition to communism (in the Western mythology), so we see today, a (claimed) totalizing "extremism" (whether of MAGA mode; or of the external variety...Read More

When scrolling through X (formerly Twitter), I usually hunt for juicy financial, economic, or political information that will inspire a newsletter piece.Last night, I came across a person I had never met who wrote the most immediately helpful thread I've ever seen. This thread was so brilliant that I created a bookmark list called "Best Advice" so I would never lose it. I knew right away that I mu...Read More