Chris Puplava's Blog

Aug 18 – The recent 6-month slide in existing home sales is so steep that even the sharpest deceleration during the housing bubble could not match the recent pace in declining home sales in that it took 9 months to fall in 2007 to match...

Aug 1 – A true pause by the Fed means an end to rate hikes AND an end to shrinking its balance sheet. The market is cheering that we may be getting closer to the former but, I believe, has yet to come to grips with the latter...

Jul 14 – As shown by the chart below, the Biden administration is selling off US Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) at the fastest pace on record. As of today, we are now at the lowest levels since 1985. Here is where things get concerning...

May 25 – Since the 1981-1982 recession, every time the 2yr UST yield dipped below the fed funds rate by 50 bps or more, the Fed cut interest rates within 1 year, no exceptions. The typical lead time was just under 2 months...

May 18 – With financial markets not quite near seizure levels, we do not appear to be close to a Fed pivot yet. Further, the other concern given the decline in economic growth (negative print in GDP for Q1 2022) is that analysts continue to not price in...

Mar 4 – New home sales are down double-digits from last year’s level as a 30-year fixed rate mortgages have surged from under 3% to nearly 5%. Unless mortgage rates move materially lower soon, the slowdown in housing is...

Jan 21 – Current money flows are reflecting a reactionary positioning to higher inflation and higher interest rates with dramatic moves seen across the ETF space. Also, as shown below, money is coming out of very large, passive ETFs and going into...

Jan 4 – While economic growth is likely to remain positive in 2022, we are seeing a large withdrawal in market liquidity coming from several sources: Fed QE is ending, REPO facility is exploding to nearly $2T, and the US Treasury will be...

Nov 16 – US and global growth is slowing after a strong initial recovery. We have the fiscal cliff ahead of us as well as the Fed's planned tapering of its QE purchases. Growth will likely slow well into the first half of 2022 and with it some moderation...

Oct 1 – The dramatic shift away from “dirty energy” to “green energy” has seen large investor capital shift away from resource companies that dominated in the early 2000s towards the FAANG stocks over the last decade. This shift in capital coupled with falling commodity prices