While everyone was distracted by the festivities of December, the yield curve in the United States went virtually flat. Stock market prices dropped further and this time around China appears unable to make up for economic slack elsewhere. In China, all signs are turning red: retail sales are growing at the slowest pace in 10 years, the real estate market is falling again, auto sales are on the decline, and the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) fell below 50, which points at a contraction of

It is September 26, 2017. The FOMC has just announced that it will hike rates to 2.25 percent. The Fed’s interest rate committee foresees strong economic growth for the years coming, unemployment declining even further, as well as subdued inflation. In other words, economic wonderland. According to my view, this was too good to be true, as I have explained earlier along these lines.

Days later, at the beginning of October, the Fed Chief Jerome Powell points out that an interest rate of 2.25

The stock market has been characterized by a decade-long complacency. The longest ever bull market in the history of the stock market has led to a curious situation in which bears are dismissed as gloomy alarmists, more or less ranked alongside wearers of tinfoil hats, astrologists and other types of conspiracy theorists. That might be the case for the moment, but that does not mean that we are wrong or that bears will be dismissed forever. By the time the current market will reach its violent end, hindsight bias – rationalizing any event after the fact – will assure that bulls await a similar fate. Whatever those short sellers from the stunning Oscar-nominated movie The Big Short knew, was something that more or less everybody knew, right? That these statements are far from the