The Retired Investor: Market Uncertainty Takes Its TollBy Bill Schmick,
04:12PM / Thursday, April 17, 2025 | |
You may have weathered the Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic sell-off, some may even remember the Dot.Com boom and bust, but this time around feels different. That's because it is.
In my entire career, I have never seen the stock market move 8.3 percent in 34 minutes on a rumor. That is what happened a few days back. To put that in perspective, the S&P 500 Index gains in minutes an entire year's performance. The following day it gave back half of that. Sure, we can blame these moves on computer-driven trading, algorithms, options, and the like but it doesn't change what happened and could easily happen again.
If you feel the 0 Comments
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The Retired Investor: Bull and Bear Case for U.S. EconomyBy Bill Schmick,
04:38PM / Thursday, April 10, 2025 | |
Are we on the verge of an American economic and social revival as Donald Trump promises, or on the eve of destruction as his critics claim? That sounds extreme, but in this partisan world we live in binary events are all we care about.
If all unfolds according to the Trump policy playbook, inflation will be lower, the country more substantial, and we will be able to grow our way out of this debt crisis through higher tax revenues from a booming economy. This land of plenty will take time to achieve, they warn, so for now, you must have faith in the narrative.
The bull case continues with tax cuts, government spending reductions, and tariffs that will 0 Comments
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The Retired Investor: Trump's Plan to Boost the EconomyBy Bill Schmick,
03:48PM / Thursday, April 03, 2025 | |
Transforming a government-heavy economy into one where the private sector leads not only takes time but also requires a period of detoxification, according to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The idea that pain may need to come before any gains has caught the nation and the stock market by surprise.
Last week, I explained that "the administration's first objective, is to slow demand in the real economy. Keynesian demand-side economics says the best way to do that is to reduce spending. Doing so, they believe, will also slow inflation. How do they do that? By distributing less money to the greatest number of people possible. That means slowing wage 0 Comments
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The Retired Investor: The Trump Economy 101By Bill Schmick,
04:06PM / Thursday, March 27, 2025 | |
For those of us in the business world, the myriad economic policy initiatives spewing from the White House are both confusing and at times difficult to understand.
Certain policies seem to cancel each other out. Full employment while reducing immigration, drill-baby-drill to force oil prices lower while raising tariffs to increase prices?
The point is that if even the professionals are having difficulty, how can those with little financial background hope to understand where the economy is going and why?
It appears, for example, that economic growth may be moderating as consumer spending weakens, while inflation remains stubborn. 0 Comments
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The Retired Investor: Foreign Money Going Home as American Market Dominance Begins to FallBy Bill Schmick,
04:38PM / Thursday, March 20, 2025 | |
The Trump administration's economic policies have placed a target on the back of most foreign nations. As for the economy, a slowdown, if not a recession, seems to be around the corner. As such, overseas investors have little reason to remain in America's financial markets.
Foreign investors represent about 17 percent of the overall holdings in the U.S. equity market and about the same in the bond market. Over the last 15 years, as I wrote in my previous column, American markets were the only game in town. While our share of the world's economy was only 27 percent, our share of the world's total investments was 70 percent.
America was 0 Comments
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