In a world where the ten year Treasury note yields 0.6% it is hard to remember the time of decent fixed income yields.  Who would have thought we’d look back at the previous decade of low interest rates and think “those were the good old days.” Turns out, yield is as hard to come by...Read More

The Situation Now seems as good a time as any to take a break from virus news and economic projections, so let’s talk about LIBOR. The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) has long been the benchmark on which collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) are based. This benchmark rate is used for more than just CMOs. Many...Read More

We’re halfway through another week of lockdowns and quarantines, and it seems some portion of the population is entertaining themselves by buying stocks.  The optimism in the stock market over the last three weeks leaves many of us scratching our heads.  No matter the news (today we learned that the U.S. economy shrank by an annualized 4.8%...Read More

This week we crossed the line from simple stock market selloff to complete financial market panic. Stocks kept dropping with even the usual bargain hunters staying away. The rush for cash started, which means even U.S. Treasury bonds were being sold. Surprising? Yes. Alarming? No. This initial stage of panic will pass. U.S. Treasuries remain the safest investment option...Read More

Business cycles are a normal part of the economic machine. A period of expansion is followed by a period of stagnation or contraction. The current expansion of 121 months far surpasses most other expansion periods, besides that of the 1990s (120 months). The average length of an economic expansion between 1945 and 2009 was just...Read More

Many recent articles cite the never-ending stock rally and low jobless rate as indicators of economic health.  But can stock markets really be used as a reliable indicator of, well… anything? Once upon a time, the stock market may have been thoroughly intertwined with economic conditions.  These days, however, stock prices are as likely to...Read More