“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those, who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Our answer must consist,
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As property values have escalated greatly in major cities, particularly with a tech orientation, I ask myself if secondary markets make more sense as the cost of living is cheaper and yields are initially higher. The tradeoff historically has been far less growth potential and lower appreciation.
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I am an avid reader and always on the lookout for interesting information and trends that might spark some kind of insight with regard to economic, financial, or societal trends. I thought I would share a few graphics that caught my attention recently. These are in no particular order.
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Chinese Lending Practices
I am reading with some fascination the incredible excesses that have been taking place in China with regard to terrible lending practices and widespread fraud. The unregulated banking system is clearly running amuck in China. Here is a very interesting link from Mish’s Global Economic Trends highlighting the massive problems unfolding with regard to loan guarantees not to being honored.
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Gary Carmell
Posted in Apartments, Economy, Housing, Investing, Manufacturing, News
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[2018 UPDATE ] The Dallas Fed released its Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey, January 29, 2018. The data was collected Jan. 16–24, and 97 Texas manufacturers responded to the survey. As you can see the business indicators in Texas remain strong as following chart shows:
Note the highlighted section showing that every indicator is “increasing”.
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Gary Carmell
Posted in Economy, Interest Rates, Investing, Manufacturing, Market Bubbles, Uncategorized, Wealth
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Maybe I’m writing about the dollar because I’m traveling abroad soon so it affects my pocketbook. It could also be due to the rather shockingly overt talking down of the dollar by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin in Davos.
“Obviously a weaker dollar is good for us as it relates to trade and opportunities,”
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What a difference a week makes. Last week I wrote about how the Fed starting to unwind its balance sheet shouldn’t cause us much worry in terms of triggering a meaningful increase in interest rates. Of course, yields spiked higher over a few days to seemingly contradict my sanguine outlook.
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The Fed’s balance sheet is comprised of approximately $2.5 trillion in Treasury securities and $1.8 trillion in mortgage backed securities. The following graph shows how its balance sheet has grown since 2009 through 2014 when it stopped its bond-buying program.
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Now that there is a new tax regime in place I thought I would discuss it one more time with some additional thoughts. It does appear that while most parts of the country will not be significantly impacted by the mortgage interest deduction being reduced to $750,000 for future home purchases,
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“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”
~ Mark Twain
Balanced Investing – Home Ownership and My Fascination with Logarithms
It was a pretty busy week so this one will be rather quick. For some reason, I was intrigued by logarithms growing up.
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