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The Retired Investor: Shrinkflation
By Bill Schmick,
04:30PM / Thursday, April 28, 2022
By now, you may have noticed that something doesn't look quite right on your grocery shelves. Could be that bag of chips, or maybe that roll of toilet paper seems to have shrunk? Let me assure you it is not your eyes; we have all come down with a bad case of shrinkflation.   Shrinkflation is an actual term, according to Wikipedia, which means "a rise in the general price level of goods per unit of weight or volume, brought about by a reduction in the weight or size of the item sold." I must admit that, until recently, the shrinkage that has now become commonplace in most grocery stores and supermarkets, thanks to a generational high in the inflation rate, went

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@theMarket: Earnings Matter, But Fed Trumps Everything
By Bill Schmick,
07:46PM / Friday, April 22, 2022
The first quarter 2022 earnings season kicked off this week with mixed results. Thus far, the standouts were Netflix and Tesla. The two companies' results could not have been more different, but in the end it didn't matter.   Netflix disappointed, reporting its first loss in subscribers in recent memory, while investors were expecting a gain in subscriber growth. There were many reasons for this including the loss of 700,000 Russian customers as a result of the Ukraine War. At last count, the stock lost 37 percent of its worth in three days and took the NASDAQ index down along with it.   Tesla, the eclectic vehicle darling, hit a homerun after the close

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The Retired Investor: U.S. Dollar Hits Two-Year Highs
By Bill Schmick,
04:25PM / Thursday, April 21, 2022
The Federal Reserve Bank's tightening of monetary policy has driven up interest rates, while causing investors to sell stocks. It has had another impact — a steep rise in the U. S. dollar.   The U.S. bond market has already priced in a 96 percent chance of a 50 basis-point rise in the Federal funds rate at the next FOMC meeting in May 2022. The fixed income markets are expecting a cumulative 2.15 percent rise in interest rates by the end of 2022. In the meantime, the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield hit 2.90 percent this week on its way to 3 percent.   As interest rates continue to rise, so does the U.S. dollar. It climbed to a new, 20-year high of 126.98

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@theMarket: Peak Inflation?
By Bill Schmick,
03:37PM / Friday, April 15, 2022
Inflation is climbing at the highest rate in 40 years. Gas prices at the pump are giving consumers a bad case of sticker shock and food, well we all know about that. So why are economists talking about peak inflation?   U.S. consumer inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), reached 8.5 percent in March 2022. The producer Price Index, which measures the cost of inputs for companies, jumped to 11.2 percent in March. On the surface, both numbers are dreadful, but economists look behind the headline numbers for hints of what areas when up and what went down.   The month-to-month rate of core price increases slowed in March and declined for core

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The Retired Investor: Food, Famine, and Global Unrest
By Bill Schmick,
04:17PM / Thursday, April 14, 2022
More than a decade ago, the Arab Spring roiled the Middle East from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen. Massive protests demanding freedom, equality and bread were met with repression and conflict. Could today's growing scarcity of food spark another spring of discontentment?   The origins of the name "Spring," whether Arab or otherwise, was a term historians used to describe the Revolutions of 1848, known as the "People's Spring." It was a series of upheavals that swept through Europe at that time. Republican revolts took place first in Sicily, spreading to France, Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire. They all ended in failure and repression and were

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