I don’t have any real reason to be sad about Queen Elizabeth’s passing, but I felt a little down about it anyway. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I think I just loved the performances of Claire Foy and Oliva Colman in the Crown and Helen Mirren in The Queen, even if the portrayals could be tough. In any case, I read several articles from our press, but I… Read More
On August 27th, Acropolis turned 20 years old. We’re not great about celebrating that kind of thing, so it took an email from Bob Schramm to even raise the subject. I’m embarrassed to say that I knew it was at the end of August but thought it was either the 26th or 28th (and being right ‘on average’ doesn’t work with dates). In some ways, it feels like just the other day. I vividly… Read More
In the 1970s, the Federal Reserve Board of Kansas City put on a series of three-day symposiums and invited economists, central bankers, and journalists to the Great American West to discuss the day’s topics. Former Fed Chair Paul Volker, who famously broke the back of inflation, liked to fly fish, so he steered the conference to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 1981, where it’s stayed ever since. The event became a… Read More
While inflation may or may not have peaked, Federal Reserve officials are still talking about raising interest rates. Several Fed officials called for rate hikes through 2023, and St. Louis Fed President said that the overnight rate should be four percent by the end of this calendar year (it’s currently between 2.25 and 2.50 percent). Although the Fed is already raising rates, a process also known as tightening, I wondered… Read More
I heard an amazing statistic a few weeks ago: Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s investment vehicle, could lose 99 percent of its value and still enjoy a track record that beats the S&P 500. Over the weekend, Berkshire released their second-quarter earnings, which reminded me of my newfound fact, so I pulled up the data. Sure enough, it’s true. And perhaps even more remarkably, it’s been consistently true since the year… Read More
I sometimes include changes in the dollar in the market summary that precedes the data table above. I cover the dollar less and less, though, because it’s so abstract. That said, the dollar has been immensely strong recently, and it’s impacting our portfolios. Any patriot likes the sound of a strong currency – after all, a strong currency should reflect a strong country. And a weak or debased currency is… Read More
Inflation is hard to measure, which is why there are many ways to measure it. In addition to the Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) indexes that I’ve discussed in recent months, there are also Producer Price Indexes (PPI), the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) indexes, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) purchased price index, the GDP price index, and the GDP Price Deflator index. Oh my! While I don’t intend for this letter… Read More
After quietly lying dormant for several decades, inflation is today’s big story in economics and markets. We all feel it at the grocery and pump, not to mention airline tickets, which are up more than a third from a year ago. It’s also dictating central bank policy, here and abroad, and everyone is rightly wondering whether that central bank policy will push global economies into a recession if it hasn’t… Read More
In a bear market like this one, when stocks are down -20 percent and bonds are down -10 percent, it’s hard to find good news. I learned a long time ago that in an up market, investors care about relative returns (earning 12 percent versus 10 percent, for example), but in a down market aren’t interested in that at all (losing, say, -8 percent instead of -10 percent). In both… Read More
Growing up, I’d never heard of the supply chain. Toys were either on the shelves or there weren’t. Today, I hear relatively young kids talking about how the supply chain is preventing them from getting the toys they see online in less than three days. It’s amazing actually. Last week, I was looking at the New York Federal Reserve website trying to find their model that predicts recessions. I didn’t… Read More
