Independent Investment Management and Financial Planning
I just wanted to take a moment to provide some important economic metrics given the truly unique environment the nation finds itself in right now.
I will provide an overview of:
Well, it’s official. The body responsible for maintaining a chronology of peaks and troughs in U.S. economic activity is the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The NBER just announced that the expansion that began in June of 2009 officially peaked and ended in February of 2020. The U.S. is officially in recession. Continue reading “BREAKING: The NBER Officially Declares Recession Ending the Longest Expansion in History”
Often a new economic boom begins when things couldn’t get much worse. High unemployment, high inflation, low / negative growth, and stagnant / declining asset prices all contribute to a feeling of misery, which is usually the prevalent emotion at the bottom of a bear market or economic cycle.
Continue reading “Then vs. Now. The Beginning of A Long-Term Cycle vs. The End of One”
Major economic policies are determined by economists and politicians relying largely on GDP and the Unemployment Rate. These policies have an enormous impact on our lives and wide-ranging implications for our nation’s future. The problem is that much of the data upon which we rely are imperfect at best. Today’s commentary is not meant to be exhaustive but intended to simply highlight a couple issues…certainly, there are more.
Continue reading “Should We Level New York City? Shortcomings of the Most Widely Tracked Economic Data”
With the inauguration of a new President, it seems appropriate to identify a new economic and market baseline as a fresh starting point for the incoming administration.
First, the conditions President Trump is inheriting then we’ll see how those conditions stack up to his five immediate predecessors’.
All data as of 12/31 of year prior to inauguration unless indicated otherwise.
There are many observations to be made, but I’ll focus on a few I find particularly interesting.