Tag Archives: 5.) Alhambra Investments

Goodbye and good riddance to the third quarter of 2022. That was one of the wildest 3 months I’ve experienced in my 40 years of trading and investing. The quarter started off great with the S&P 500 rising 14% from July 1 to August 16 but ended with a 17% swan dive into the end of the quarter. And we closed on the low of the year. The 10-year Treasury yield rose from 2.97% to 4% just a few days before the end of the quarter. The 3-7 year Treasury index – our...

In a world where the price of everything is going up, Medicare recipients get a price cut beginning January 1, 2023. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) just announced that the monthly premium for Medicare Part B, which covers doctor visits, diagnostic tests, and other outpatient services, is decreasing $5.20 per month to $164.90. That’s good news in light of the 14.5% increase in Part B premiums in 2022, the largest dollar increase in the history...

What impact does Fed tightening really have on home prices? Doug Terry, Alhambra’s Head of Investment Research, explains. [embedded content] [embedded content] Tags: Alhambra Research,currencies,economy,Featured,Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy,Markets,newsletter,Real Estate,stocks

Who is really keeping oil prices high? Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun says it’s the banks. [embedded content] [embedded content] Tags: Alhambra Research,commodities,economy,Featured,Markets,newsletter

Is the economy contracting? Alhambra’s Steve Brennan poses that question to CEO Joe Calhoun. [embedded content] [embedded content] Tags: Alhambra Research,Bonds,commodities,currencies,economy,Featured,Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy,Markets,newsletter,Real Estate,stocks

Nothing happened last week. Stocks and bonds and commodities continued to trade and move around in price but there was no news to which those movements could be attributed. The economic news was a trifle and what there was told us exactly nothing new about the economy. A report that wholesale inventories rose 0.6% cannot be turned into market moving news no matter how hard the newsletter sellers try. Jobless claims fell 8,000? Yawn. Exports rose $500 million? In a...

Medicare. The government defines it as “The federal health insurance program for people 65 and older.” That seems simple enough. But there’s more to it than meets the eye because Medicare, like so many other things, has fine print that could end up costing you a lot of money if you don’t know about it. Since Medicare began in 1965, a myth has developed that Medicare pays for all your healthcare costs. Absolutely not true! The Medicare website says, “Original...

The lagged effect of inflation. “Just call me Ishmael,” Jay. . [embedded content] Tags: economy,Featured,Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy,newsletter

Since the summer of 2020, my expectation for the US economy has been that once all the COVID distortions are gone, it would revert to its previous trend growth of around 2%. And that seems to be exactly what is going on with the economy right now. There was a shift in consumption preference during COVID for goods over services with the goods consumption rising well above the pre-COVID trend: . Now, some of that, as we know, is due to inflation so if we correct for...

Since 1935, Social Security has been synonymous with retirement. It was always intended to supplement retirement income, never be a person’s total retirement income. Unfortunately, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, about half of older Americans rely on Social Security for at least 50% of their income, and 25% of retirees rely on it for 90% of their income. That’s why more Americans are choosing to work longer. For decades, labor force...