Market Opinion

News from the “puzzle palace” (otherwise known as Washington, DC):

• Senator Elizabeth Warren calls the Chairman of the Federal Reserve “dangerous”.  Really?  Jay Powell may be too dovish for my tastes, but he is a fine man and I would hardly call him “dangerous”.  Senator Warren should apologize for her level of invective.
• Congress is still struggling to pass the infrastructure bill.  As I previously stated, we need to improve our roads, bridges, airports, broadband, etc.  But the 3.5 trillion dollar Democrat “wish list” is a bridge too far.  
• The administration wants banks to report transaction information on any account with more $600 to the IRS.  This is completely absurd and is an an unfair burden on small banks and businesses.  More importantly, the effect on tax compliance seems questionable.  I was talking to a friend in the IT department of a major bank and he was happy about this one.  Why?  Because it means virtual permanent employment for him as he would need to design, code, and debug thousands of lines of code to support this stupid requirement!  Here is more information:  ABA Letter to Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees: Views on Tax Information Reporting Proposal | American Bankers Association
• Congress wants to virtually close IRA investing to high earners (glad I already built mine).  See this:  Why Is Everyone Talking About the Mega Backdoor Roth IRA? | The Motley Fool
• The talks on the debt limit are patently ridiculous, since we those funds have already been appropriated and spent.  It is similar to an individual buying goods and services on their credit card and then refusing to pay.  If there is a “debt limit”, it should be done before the money is spent, not after!  Seems obvious, doesn’t it?  But not in the “puzzle palace” (oh, sorry, Washington, DC!).

On the market in general, I think we are in for some more trouble.  Limited supply of both goods (particularly chips) and service (i.e. workers) are putting us on the road to more inflation.   Anyone who has taken a beginning economics class will recognize a supply/demand curve imbalance that will only reach equilibrium with price increases.   read more

Looking at the title of this commentary, I have to make some comments on the 20 year anniversary of that terrible day in history.  On that day in 2001, I was in San Francisco as a “way station” on my way to Hawaii for a vacation. Needless to say, the Hawaiian portion of my vacation was cancelled. I wasn’t able to return home until the following Sunday. The world was with us on that day and afterward, it is a tragedy that unity was squandered.  And I am sure that you have probably had your fill of documentaries on the subject, but I recommend that you watch “Rise and Fall : The World Trade Center” on the History Channel. It has some interesting facts on how the towers were built as well as their tragic fall.  Fortunately, I didn’t lose any friends or family on 9/11, although several of my friends worked in NYC and they suffered PTSD from the trauma of that day. And several years prior to 2001, I commuted to Wall Street thru the WTC at about the same time that the planes hit and thought – wow I could have been there – fate works in strange ways, doesn’t it?  Finally, did you know that the pilots assigned to bring down United 93 were on a suicide mission?  There wasn’t time to arm the plane!  They were going to ram the aircraft.  Again, fate intervened.   read more

Hello, folks.  I have been monitoring the market situation but I haven’t had much to add to anything that I had already said.  But today I have some comments.

On the Infrastructure bill, I hope that it passes.  As I previously said, it does make sense to invest in improving our roads, bridges, airports, and broadband.  However, it doesn’t make sense to overspend with the Democrats 3.5 trillion wish list.  I think that it will be inflationary.   read more

I am so glad that those poor families making only $150,000/year are receiving their first childcare credits!  Another example of government largesse gone wild.  Despite the paradoxical drop in bond prices, I think we are on the road to inflation, or maybe, as a Barron’s commentary said this weekend, the “stagflation” of the 1970’s.  “Stagflation”, for those you unfamiliar with the term, is inflation without growth.  read more

My apologies for being a bit late on commentary.   Also, my apologies for picking OLLI, BABA and VIPS as they have performed terribly.  But their underperformance points makes my point on diversification – by allocating no more than 5% to any one stock, poor performance is ameliorated by good performance of the other stocks in the portfolio.  On OLLI, I still think it is undervalued, and I recommend holding it.  As for the Chinese stocks (BABA and VIPS), I think that the Chinese government is trying to send a strong message to the company owners that they are in charge.  But they will soon recognize that if they want the extraordinary revenues from these companies to continue, they will have to remove their jack boots from these companies’ necks.   read more