We’ve seen volatility come back into equity markets over the last few weeks. Ironically, this has come amid a slew of stronger-than-expected economic data, including payrolls and consumption. Consumer confidence is also rising. The problem is that inflation numbers have stopped decelerating as fast as they were a few months ago. We wrote about this …

The US national debt is about $31 trillion right now, which is equivalent to about 120% of GDP (as of the third quarter of 2022). Massive, but also note that this is down from a peak of 135% in the second quarter of 2020. As a point of clarification, the US government typically racks up …

“American Consumers: Have money, will spend“ That, in a nutshell, is the story of the economy right now. Retail sales and food services surged 3% in January, making a mockery of expectations for a 1.7% gain. This is the largest monthly increase since March 2021, but that came on the back of stimulus checks. So …

January inflation data hit the nose on expectations. Headline CPI rose 0.5% and is up 6.4% year-over-year, while core CPI (ex-food and energy) rose 0.4% and is up 5.6% year-over-year. The fact that inflation is coming in at expectations is in and of itself a victory. That’s a sharp contrast to last year when inflation …

Putting the Tech layoff announcements in perspective It’s hard to get away from all the headlines about layoffs in the Technology sector these days. The most recent was Yahoo, which announced they were laying off 20% of its workforce, about 1,600 people. The firm, Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc., tracks layoff announcements and their most …

We here at the Carson Investment Research Team regularly update our “House Views” on the markets, and specifically various asset classes that make up the core of our portfolios. These views are the foundation of our active asset allocation recommendations and form the basis of decisions we make while managing various portfolios on the Carson …

Sometimes a meme can convey a white paper’s worth of sentiment within a single picture; that’s why they spread faster than the news sometimes. so, let’s keep it simple: The economy created 517,000 jobs in January, well above expectations for a slowdown to 175,000.   The unemployment rate is at 3.4%, the lowest level since …

This week, the Federal Reserve raised rates by 0.25%, taking the federal funds rate to the 4.50-4.75% range. This is the slowest pace of increase since last March and a welcome downshift after the aggressive pace we saw last year. They also said that ongoing interest rate increases will be appropriate to return inflation to …

The latest GDP growth numbers for Q4 2022 came in at 2.9% quarter-over-quarter (annualized rate), which was higher than expectations for a 2.6% reading. This is only slightly below the Q3 growth rate of 3.2%. Over the full year, GDP growth was up just 1% compared to the end of 2021. But this hides the …

Carson Investment Research just released its 2023 outlook, which we titled “The Edge of Normal.”  The big theme for 2022 was higher-than-expected inflation, which surged to the highest level since 1981. This resulted in the Federal Reserve embarking on its most aggressive rate hike cycle in 40 years, which led to an ugly 2022 for …