Milei in Davos 2024: Summary in 20 quotes 1: “Today I am here to tell you that the western world is in danger, and it’s in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the west are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to
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The U.S. stock market’s lackluster performance to date in 2024 has felt anti-climactic, coming off the dramatic surge at the end of 2023. Still, investors seem confident the U.S. economy will achieve a “soft landing” and the Federal Reserve will successfully tame inflation. As such, the equity market remains complacent, with investors’ lofty expectations leaving
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Philly Fed for Jan comes in at -10.6 vs -6.7 estimate and prior month reading revised lower to -12.8 from -10.5 originally. Contrary to Empire, Philly shows future activity declined from +12.6 in Dec to -4.0 in Jan, lowest since May.

[In] an absolutely baffling 2008-esque move, Powell and the powers that be seem to want to normalize banks with impaired balance sheets; or at the very least hide them among the healthy ones. The US is preparing a rule that would force banks to tap the Fed’s discount window for emergency loans, even if they
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TOY is a “Turn Of the Year” Barometer based on the S&P’s Nov19-Jan19 performance.  The 2024 TOY is 7.22%. Since 1950 if TOY was > 3%, the next year (Jan19-Jan19) was 35-2 for an avg 16.5% gain with 2 single digit losses.  Feb-April is 32-5 for an avg 3 mt gain of 4.23%

In [our Q3 report], we presented how the US Government Fiscal doom loop was getting worse and how mathematically US Federal borrowings were crowding out the debt markets – sending interest rates higher. The nearly parabolic growth in US Federal interest costs is making the deficit worse and without monetary accommodation, we suggested that the
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US public pension plans that manage hundreds of billions of dollars of assets are increasingly turning to risky leverage strategies as burgeoning private market holdings create cash flow strains. At least eight very large US public pension funds are using borrowed cash or other leverage strategies, now that the board of Calstrs, one of the
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Since 1952, the S&P 500 has finished each presidential election year in the green except 3 times.  And each of those was an open election without an incumbent running.

What: The S&P 500 made its first new high in more than 500 days on Friday – snapping what had been the 6th longest streak on record (back to 1950) without a new high. At the same time, the number of stocks making new lows (on both the NYSE and NASDAQ) has expanded every week
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As budget deficits surge toward the stratosphere, Congress will soon have to get serious about savings proposals. Yet reforming Social Security and Medicare—the leading drivers of long-term deficits—remains a political nonstarter. Neither party is willing to raise middle-class taxes. And cutting defense and social spending would save at most $200 billion annually from deficits that
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