Executive Summary: The Q4 earnings of Occidental Petroleum provides a case study in how an oil producer can grow earnings at a time when global production is outpacing consumption and oil prices are weak. … Also: It’s not just the

Executive Summary: The EU is suffering economically, its growth slowed by internal hurdles that act as unintended tariffs. Melissa examines a grand new plan to reinvigorate economic growth, but YRI is skeptical of its success. Investors in European stock markets,

Executive Summary: The Bond Vigilantes aren’t saddling up just yet, but they’re on high alert, Ed reports. They’re watching to see whether anti-DOGE gunslingers will cripple the new federal department or whether DOGE will root out sufficient government inefficiencies to

Executive Summary: Trump 2.0’s various new tariffs have multiple aims. Regarding China, the administration hopes that the additional 10% across-the-board tariff on all imports from the country will spur the Chinese government to slow the flow of fentanyl into the

Executive Summary: The Fed doesn’t always make the right decisions. But there’s next to no chance that it will mismanage liquidity and overly stress short-term funding markets, Eric explains. The Fed would end its quantitative tightening before that happened. …

Executive Summary: Dr Ed is on the road more often these days visiting YRI accounts around the US and abroad. His “Roaring 2020s Tour” focuses on the resilience of the US economy over recent years and reasons that it should

Executive Summary: When others saw labor market weakening last summer, we saw normalization from the settling down of pandemic-period churn. Our labor market outlook remains constructive. The growth of the labor force should continue to slow, but demand for workers

Executive Summary: Nvidia remains king of the AI play, but another AI company has been turning investors’ heads: Palantir. This government supplier has also been saving corporate America much time and money with its AI software solutions. Jackie recaps takeaways

Executive Summary: We continue to recommend overweighting the US stock market in global portfolios. While valuations might be lower in foreign markets, Eric explains, we don’t see enough economic justification to abandon our Stay Home stance for a Go Global

Executive Summary: Trump’s tariffs are about much more than money. They support his agenda to reshape America’s relations with each of the affected nations to the exclusive benefit of the US, Melissa explains. The vision of this consummate dealmaker amounts

Executive Summary: Why is the US economy so strong? Look in the mirror: The consumer is the engine of growth. Yes, technological advancements will continue to buoy GDP, as will Trump 2.0 deregulation and lower taxes. But consumer spending accounts

Executive Summary: The S&P 500 Transportation Composite has been on the move this year, Jackie reports, especially its Airlines and Railroad components. Airline traffic is up to pre-pandemic highs for the big players, and so are their earnings and stock

Executive Summary: Eurozone stock markets have been performing well and sport much lower valuations than the US stock market. But their valuations are lower partly for index composition reasons, Eric explains, and we still have plenty of economic and political

Executive Summary: Chinese firm DeepSeek has taken the evolution of AI to a new level with its cheaper Language Learning Model. As investors scramble to digest the ramifications for stakeholders in US-made AI, Ed and Eric share their perspective. It’s

Executive Summary: The current bull market has been driven mostly by valuation expansion; now valuation is historically high. We expect earnings growth to perpetuate the bull market this year; any more valuation expansion could leave the market vulnerable to a

Executive Summary: Trump’s flurry of executive orders on his first day in office upended the playing fields for various industries in a bunch of fell swoops. Jackie reports on the winners and losers and discusses what the changes will mean

Executive Summary: It’s evident how much policy uncertainty is baked into the dollar’s value from its whipsawing during the first two days of Trump 2.0 in reaction to changed expectations regarding the timing of the new tariffs. Despite concerns of

Executive Summary: Expectations for more rate cuts this year than previously expected buoyed both bond and stock markets last week. The prior week was bad for both markets as rate-cut expectations diminished. But last Thursday’s comments by Fed Governor Waller

Executive Summary: Southern California’s devastating wildfires couldn’t have hit at a worse time. The regional insurance market has been in a dysfunctional state of flux, as some insurers have fled the risky market, others have hiked premiums to account for

Executive Summary: China gargantuan trade surplus won’t shrink until policymakers stimulate domestic demand. Yuan depreciation now risks capital flight. … In the UK, gilt yields have reached multi-year highs, raising the government’s borrowing costs to levels that might jeopardize its

Executive Summary: Is this year’s rotation of voting members on the FOMC likely to shift the monetary policy needle? Which way? Today, Eric identifies the new hawks and doves and speculates about how they might vote at January’s meeting. …

Executive Summary: The financial markets have been recalibrating their expectations for monetary policy since the FOMC’s December meeting and their expectations for economic changes under the incoming Trump 2.0 administration since Election Day. In this context, Friday’s strong employment report

Executive Summary: Today, Jackie recaps takeaways from this week’s Consumer Electronics Show—including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s insights about the future of artificial intelligence and the most notable of the many AI-enhanced high-tech gadgets unveiled at the convention. … Also: Industrial

Executive Summary: Today, Melissa takes us on a world tour, reviewing the takeaways from the latest economic releases of major economies. Those in Europe are a mixed bag, with the tourist economies of Spain and Italy looking good as Germany

Executive Summary: Our conviction in the labor market’s continued health wasn’t shaken by the increase in unemployment that triggered the Sahm Rule a few months ago. Today, Eric explains why we dismissed this signal and why we expect revised BLS

Executive Summary: The January Barometer and January Effect have been interesting statistical regularities that may not have much investment usefulness. It’s better to stay in the stock market whatever the month brings than to try and execute exits and entrances

Executive Summary: Twenty-twenty-four no doubt will be remembered by equities investors as the year that everything AI-related trounced everything not. Jackie has the striking performance data to prove it. … Also: For some of the fastest-growing S&P 500 sectors this

Executive Summary: Europe, Japan, and China all face economic challenges that monetary policy could help address, but none of their central banks seems ready to deploy the monetary firepower at their disposal, Melissa and Eric report. In Europe, the ECB’s

Executive Summary: We’re no longer the most bullish strategists on the block. We project a 15% advance in the S&P 500 next year, whereas others see reason to expect 20%. With bullishness abounding, contrarian indicators are flashing red, and we

Executive Summary: Lots of crosscurrents are converging to determine the course of inflation in 2025. So projecting that course takes seeing where those currents are headed, predicting with the aid of historical correlations how they’ll likely impact inflation, then overlaying