Financial Sense Blog

2011 will see the largest magnitude of US bank commercial real estate mortgage maturities on record. Will this be an issue for an industry that has been supporting reported earnings growth in part by reduced loan loss reserves over the recent past? Here's what the numbers suggest...

To begin, geothermal is still the forgotten renewable and, compared with fossil fuels, has a long road to becoming a household word in the markets. The industry faces a series of challenges to be taken as a serious and viable alternative to the energy king, fossil fuels. Here’s a summary of strengths and weaknesses that came up at the forum.

Soft gold prices without hard-money rates? Not for long, says the world's 40-year unbacked money so far...

A 10% rise in food prices in a household that spends 10% on food (a typical upper-middle class U.S. household) results in a "statistical noise" 1% increase in the family budget. In a family budget with 40% devoted to food, a 10% increase in food meaningfully crimps household spending. A doubling of food prices would be catastrophic.

The implied volatility of the index puts I have been using compressed down to levels last seen at the peak of the 2007 housing bubble market. Sentiment Trader commented that the S&P500 has gone for 30 consecutive days without closing below its 10 day moving average and this has never happened in 88 years.

Our future energy course is being charted today because of the ramifications of peak oil, because cars pollute too much, because of climate change and because we wish to end our dependence on foreign supplied energy.

As you know, I'm an avid researcher when it comes to my own annual forecast, which you saw a couple of weeks ago. One of my favorite resources is STRATFOR, a global intelligence company founded by my friend George Friedman.

The Russian intelligence officers consider the candidate's political sympathies, opinions, enthusiasms, disappointments and vices. Is he in debt? Is he a womanizer? Does he drink, use drugs? Is he eaten away by envy? Does he have an exaggerated opinion of his own abilities?

The gold/silver ratio is not just for gold bugs; it can help us monitor the appeal of the ‘risk on’ trade relative to the ‘risk off’ trade in many markets, including global stocks and commodities.

The CIA produces the World Fact Book. There is a lot of interesting information to look at. The spooks have been updating the info for 2010. Some of the year over year comparisons are interesting. In its intro to the Global Economy they had the following to say. I think they summed things up pretty well.