James Picerno

The economy isn’t always decisive in US presidential elections, except when it is. Think Herbert Hoover in 1932 and George H.W. Bush in 1992. Each lost the presidency to a challenger primarily...

Fixed income as an asset class is looking bullish as Fed Chairman Powell prepares to give a widely anticipated speech this Friday (Aug. 23). The central banker is expected to drop clues about the...

Recent stock market turbulence has left two equity sectors outperforming this year: communications services and utilities, based on set of ETFs through Monday’s close (Aug. 19). The remaining sectors...

US recession risk appeared to ease in the wake of last week’s encouraging updates for retail sales and jobless claims. Will the better-than-expected numbers delay the widely expected rate cut that...

A lot can happen over the course of a week when it comes to the crowd’s fickle sentiment du jour on matters of recession. At this time a week ago the headlines warned that a contraction, if it hadn’t...

The spread between the US 10-year Treasury yield and a ‘fair value’ estimate calculated by CapitalSpectator.com continued to narrow in July. The market rate is still well above the model’s estimate,...

Betting against the US stock market has been a losing trade in relative terms in recent years and from a top-down down perspective it’s not obvious that’s about to change. But carving up the global...

Early assessments of third-quarter economic activity for the US point to a slowdown vs. Q2, based on the median nowcast for estimates compiled by CapitalSpectator.com. The downshift is prominent, but...

It’s been a rough ride in recent weeks, but trend data still leaves room for debate on the prospects for maintaining bullish bets. Using a set of ETFs shows that most of the major asset classes in...

From the vantage of the past week of trading the case looks clear for calling recent market volatility a sign of a risk-off pivot. But if your time horizon is longer, there’s still room for debate,...