Private pension funds have much smaller funding gaps than their government counterparts.... Read More
Defined benefit plans continue to be replaced by IRAs and defined contribution plans.... Read More
A home may be the biggest purchase most people make in their lives, but households' home equity is actually surpassed by households' direct stock ownership.... Read More
Over 46% of FDIC deposits in the U.S. are uninsured.... Read More
The S&P 500 officially entered bear market territory yesterday. The relationship between bear markets and recessions is not what many might expect. Has the recession already started?... Read More
Going into Friday's CPI release, we noted 33% to 40% of the investment community still believed inflation was transitory. In other words, inflation's potential to drag down risk markets was not fully priced in. Friday's CPI killed the transitory hope and we are now seeing the effects of the remaining believers capitulating as a result.... Read More
Long-term commodity investors have profited from backwardation over the past year, adding to total returns to a degree rarely seen.... Read More
First-time homebuyers enjoyed a relatively affordable market in the decade following the housing crash. The recent rise in prices and mortgage rates has brought that to an end.... Read More
Last week we heard several individuals express concern over where the US economy was headed. Amid these negative outlooks, traders do not seem positioned for a severe downturn in the economy.... Read More
The economy can fall off a cliff, but if we continue to see positive job growth, the Fed will keep hiking until inflation stalls.... Read More
Demand is up, refining capacity is falling, imports are hard to come by, and China and Air Travel are expected to increase.... Read More
Inflation is not going down without extreme policy intervention to force it lower. It is not going down by itself. And that extreme policy has a high probability of causing a recession.... Read More
56% of households owning mutual funds make more than $100k per year.... Read More
Active equity funds continue to charge 10x the fees of passive equity funds.... Read More
Over a third of U.S. households own an IRA. The difference in ownership between the highest and lowest income buckets is staggering.... Read More
A look at the holdings of government-only money market funds versus prime money market funds... Read More
For the time being, the labor market is giving the Fed the cover it needs to tighten financial conditions. This essentially means it is allowing stocks to falter in order to rein in demand and inflation. The payrolls report may have taken a back seat to inflation releases, but it will nonetheless play a part in determining how aggressively the Fed will proceed in its fight against inflation.... Read More
The Federal Reserve's reverse repo facility is now the parking spot for over $2 trillion. This acts as another version of tightening as the Fed is getting ready to start quantitative tightening.... Read More