We tell our students not to read too much into the strength or weakness of a currency. However, the dollar’s trajectory since November 2016 is quite striking. Here is the trade weighted real value of the US dollar against a broad basket of currencies, through December 2017. Figure 1: Real value of US dollar against broad […]

During yesterday’s surprisingly candid remarks by Bill Dudley, the second most important person in the Federal Reserve – the organization that is responsible for the third consecutive and largest ever yet asset bubble in history – said that one risk he was increasingly worried about was, drumroll, elevated asset prices. Because, supposedly, the Fed has little to […]

“The most massive financial crisis since the Great Depression.” How many times did we hear that? A savage mauling of worldwide markets, meant to humble and teach us. Uh-huh. Keep it in context, folks. Take a good, hard look at the entirety – – the whole thing – – of the global financial crisis. Use a […]

Thrivent Mutual Funds is part of Thrivent Financial and had more than $116 billion worth of assets under management as of December 2016. It serves at least 2 million customers and has more than 100 investment professionals. Moreover, it has invested in 23 actively managed mutual funds across a wide range of categories including equity, income […]

We had another wild day of natural gas trading today, with prices experiencing significant volatility this morning in attempting to pull back before slightly colder afternoon weather model guidance sent prices rallying into the settle.  Like yesterday, where you look along the natural gas strip determines how you saw price action. The February contract skyrocketed […]