Confidence in the economy fell sharply in January, slumping to a 12-year low, according to the Conference Board latest survey data. On its face, the sharp drop raises questions about consumer spending in the months ahead. But until there’s confirmation in the hard data, it’s best to view the polling cautiously and look for supporting context in other numbers.
Author Archives: James Picerno
Fed Rate Cuts On Hold Till June, According To Market Forecasts
The Federal Reserve is expected to leave its target rate unchanged at tomorrow’s policy meeting, marking a shift after three straight cuts in 2025. Keeping rates steady is the current outlook until June, but several factors are in play that could change the calculus in the weeks ahead.
Commodities Lead Major Asset Classes So Far In 2026
Prices for raw materials have rocketed higher so far this year, outperforming the rest of the major asset classes by a wide margin through Friday’s close (Jan. 23), based on a set of ETFs. Foreign stocks are currently strong, but they remain distant second‑place winners.
Book Bits: 24 January 2026
● Exile Economics: What Happens if Globalisation Fails
Ben Chu
Essay by author via The Next Big Idea Club
The idea that we should reduce dependence on foreigners has been with us for thousands of years. Take the ancient Greek Cynics. Diogenes, who famously lived in a barrel in the marketplace of Corinth, believed that self-sufficiency—living with only what you truly needed—was the highest moral state… This instinct that we are safer, purer, or more virtuous alone is remarkably resilient. It appears under every ideological banner: religious and secular, left and right, nationalist and cosmopolitan, capitalist and communist. So it’s no surprise to see it re-emerge today in debates over trade, global supply chains, and “decoupling.”
Will US Q4 Growth Exceed Q3’s Strong Pace?
Economic activity grew at a strong pace in the second and third quarters, according to official GDP data published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The party continued in Q4, based on a widely followed nowcast that projects that the robust expansion in the two previous quarters will accelerate in the government’s delayed GDP report due next month.
Foreign Stocks Extend Lead Over US Shares In 2026
It was a vintage performance. President Trump skewered the edifice of globalization yesterday at World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Lest anyone miss the message, he claimed that “The United States is keeping the whole world afloat” and that the status quo would no longer endure.
Will The Supreme Court Expand Trump’s Influence Over The Fed?
It comes down to the meaning of two words: “for cause.” Hanging in the balance: the President’s ability to control how the Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy.
Long-Term Corporates Take Early Lead In The Bond Market In 2026
Maturity risk has been in favor so far this year in the bond market. A couple of weeks may be misleading, but so far in 2026 the crowd’s appetite for longer maturities is resonating in fixed income, based on a set of ETFs through Friday’s close (Jan. 16).
Book Bits: 17 January 2026
● The Making of a Permabear: The Perils of Long-term Investing in a Short-term World
Jeremy Grantham with Edward Chancellor
Review via The Wall Street Journal
Buy low, sell high, get rich. Jeremy Grantham’s Wall Street career exactly conforms to this charmed sequence, but with what troubles along the way. The reader, at least, will be glad for them. They constitute the breath and the life of “The Making of a Permabear,” a memoir written with the financial journalist Edward Chancellor.
Mr. Grantham, a co-founder and longtime investment strategist at the Boston-based money-management firm GMO, can be said to have dug the ruts and potholes on his own bumpy road. He is a nonconformist. Worse, in the context of today’s flyaway stock market, he is a principled, value-minded, dogmatic nonconformist. He has nailed his colors to the mast of investment value (don’t overpay for stocks and bonds) and to the idea that profit margins and equity valuations never stray far from their respective long-term averages. He lays down the rule that “capital moves toward profits: excess returns attract competition and bad returns drive capital away. Pretty soon you have mean reversion.” Who can disagree?
Are The Stars Aligning For A New Bull Run In Homebuilder Stocks?
The relatively weak performance of shares in the homebuilder industry for the past two calendar years is, on first glance, surprising. A long-running under-investment in home building has created a housing shortage at a time of a demographic-drive rise in demand. But holding an ETF that tracks shares in the homebuilding industry has only matched the return of the broad equity market over the past five years but at a cost of sharply higher volatility.