2021: an excellent year for the unscrupulous

Fuelled by crypto, SPACs and commission-motivated promoters, there were 1,110 initial public offerings globally in 2021 (3x the average of the past decade).  As shown below, two-thirds of them are ending the year with losses.

It is important to understand that there is no level of personal wealth at which those without scruples will stop capitalizing on the trust of gullible followers.

Actor Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman, The New Republic, join ‘Crypto Night in America’ to discuss why celebrities promoting cryptocurrency may be bad for individual investors.  Here is a direct video link.

Posted in Main Page | Comments Off on 2021: an excellent year for the unscrupulous

Fed induced asset bubbles have a history of bad endings

Valuable historical context for the Fed’s bubble-blowing antics in this Politico article around former FOMC member and QE dissenter Thomas Hoenig.  See The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet has a Dire Warning about Where We are headed.  Here’s a taste:

As a bank examiner, Hoenig realized another very important thing. Easy money policies don’t just drive up the price of consumer goods, like bread and cars. The money also drives up price of assets like stocks, bonds and real estate. During the 1970s, low interest rates fueled demand for assets, which eventually inflated asset bubbles across the Midwest, including in heavy farming states, such as Kansas and Nebraska, and in the energy-producing state of Oklahoma. When asset prices like this rise quickly, it creates that dreaded thing called an asset bubble.

The self-reinforcing logic of asset bubbles was painfully evident in farming, and it reflected the dynamics that would later play out in the housing bubble and the over-heated asset markets of 2021.

…“There is no painless solution,” Hoenig said in a recent interview. “It’s going to be difficult. And the longer you wait the more painful it will end up being.”

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 has made all-time highs courtesy of its ten most concentrated holdings (chart below courtesy of ISABELNET.com) at the same time that its average component stock is -11% from a 52-week high.  Worse breadth than the 2000 tech top.  

Posted in Main Page | Comments Off on Fed induced asset bubbles have a history of bad endings

Hunt on the history of inflation

Worthwhile discussion and historical perspective.

Lacy Harris Hunt is an economist and Executive Vice President of Hoisington Investment Management Company. He is Vice-Chairman of HIMCO’s strategic investment policy committee and also Chief Economist for the Wasatch Hoisington Treasury Bond Fund. He has authored two books, A Time to Be Rich and Dynamics of Forecasting: Financial Cycles, Theory and Techniques, and has had articles published in Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Journal of Finance, the Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal of Portfolio Management, among other publication outlets. He received the Abramson Award from the National Association for Business Economics for “outstanding contributions in the field of business economics.”
Here is a direct video link.

Posted in Main Page | Comments Off on Hunt on the history of inflation