Stock markets have settled down after an awful couple of weeks earlier this month. On Feb. 5, the Dow Jones suffered its largest-ever drop in terms of points. It was down 1,600 at one point and ultimately lost 1,175.21 points, a 4.6% drop that day. At one point during that week, the Dow was off 10% in correction territory. But everything is calm now and most of the mainstream is once again feeling bullish and optimistic.
Peter Schiff spoke at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference 2018 last month before the market tanked. But his message remains relevant in the aftermath of the plunge and the subsequent recovery because the dynamics in the market remain pretty much the same. Conditions are still ripe for a 1987-style market crash.
Investors have not been this optimistic…since 1987. They are even more optimistic than they were at the height of the technology bubble, the dot-com bubble, the new era. Of course, 1987 didn’t end well, right? We had a stock market crash, and there’s a lot about what’s happening today that reminds me about what was happening in ’87.”
Could the house of credit cards Americans have built be on the verge of collapse?
Earlier this week, the New York Fed released the latest data on US household debt, revealing it has grown to a record $13 trillion. Americans have been spending, but they’ve been putting a lot of it on plastic. Credit card balances grew by $24 billion in the last quarter of 2017 alone. Meanwhile, US consumers owe $1.22 trillion on vehicle loans. This can only go on for so long. And there are indications that the American credit card spending spree may be winding down.
Retail sales unexpectedly fell in January, recording their biggest drop in nearly a year.
Passage of a GOP budget that added $300 billion in new spending has focused plenty of attention on surging federal government debt over the last week or so. But Uncle Sam isn’t the only one running up those credit cards. Everyday Americans are also piling on the debt.
Total household debt soared to a record $13 trillion dollars in 2017, according to the latest data released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data.
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
The bears were running on Wall Street again Thursday, as the Dow Jones suffered another steep tumble. After a record drop of 1,175 points Tuesday and a rebound Wednesday, the Dow shed another 1,333 points.
The Dow Jones dropped 6.5% in four days. That’s the steepest decline in any week since October 2008. The S&P 500 has shed 6.6% of its value this week, its second-worst drop since 2008. The NASDAQ has also tanked, giving up all of its 2018 gains.
As Peter Schiff put it in his most recent podcast, “This market is looking ugly.”
Just over a week ago, President Trump delivered the State of the Union speech. The president gave a speech with a decidedly optimistic tone. This was certainly welcome with the increasingly fractured and divided American political landscape. But it’s important to focus beyond the political theater and take a hard look at where the US economy really is and where it is heading. Unfortunately, the political rhetoric doesn’t always line up with economic reality.
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
Everybody seems bullish on the economy. Nobody is worried about anything, even though there is everything to be worried about. Peter Schiff said he feels like he’s in Alice in Wonderland. In his most recent podcast, he referenced a Morgan Stanley analyst interviewed by CNBC.
She’s unquestioningly bullish on every front. Everything is bullish. There is nothing at all to worry about. In fact, the only thing she said that anybody is worried about is that there’s nothing to worry about. It’s that things are so good, they’re wondering what are we missing. Maybe we should be a little bit worried because nobody is worried because everything is good. I mean, there are so many things to worry about. That is the reality. But they’re not worried about any of them.”
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
The dollar continued to tank Wednesday, hitting a 3-year low after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he welcomed a weakening dollar.
The dollar index measuring the greenback against a basket of six major currencies slipped below 90 for the first time since December 2014. Meanwhile, gold climbed, hitting its highest level since August 2016.
