The US stock market is coming off its worst week since March. It was also the worst pre-election stock market in history. In his latest podcast, Peter talked about the market, the election and what’s likely ahead.
Gold and silver have had a tough week. So have stocks. In a lot of ways, it looked like March all over again, with worries about increasing COVID-19 cases and new lockdowns. But then we got the Q3 GDP number and that injected a dose of optimism. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks about the dynamics in the markets and provides a little reality check on that big GDP number.
It looks like March all over again.
Pretty much everything except dollars sold off yesterday. The Dow Jones was down 943 points. The S&P 500 dropped by 3.53%. The Nasdaq plummeted by 426 points. It was panic selling as markets fretted about the rise in COVID-19 cases, new lockdowns in Europe, and the lack of progress on a stimulus deal in the US.
Peter Schiff delivered a key-note speech at the Virtual Investor Day Conference. He walked through the history of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy over the last several decades and explained the inevitable outcome. Peter’s recap of Fed history leads you to an undeniable conclusion: the Federal Reserve has never been right. And it has set us up for an even bigger crisis.
We read a lot about the big-picture impacts of the economic meltdown caused by the government response to the coronavirus pandemic. We hear about the millions thrown out of work, the surge in corporate bankruptcies and small businesses shutting down, and the specter of surging inflation. But how has all of this impacted the average American?
In a nutshell, it has been devastating.
The mainstream isn’t worried about inflation. In fact, we’re told inflation is muted. And that’s true, at least by some measures. We haven’t seen the rising consumer price index (CPI) you might expect as central banks inject trillions of dollars created out of thin air into the economy. But just because government numbers don’t reflect it – yet – that doesn’t mean there isn’t inflation. In fact, defined correctly, increasing the money supply is inflation. And we certainly have plenty of that.
The fact is inflation is here and it will almost certainly find its way to consumer prices eventually.
We’ve been saying for months that the stock market has completely disconnected from economic reality. The markets have hit record highs despite the economic chaos caused by the government response to COVID-19. As Peter Schiff put it in a podcast back in May, the markets are on a Fed-induced sugar high.
In a recent article, David Stockman put the stock market bubble into perspective and asked a poignant question: how could the S&P 500 be trading at its highest multiple in 70 years when the growth rate of corporate earnings has been sinking for more than two decades?
Stocks sold off Monday as markets fretted over the lack of progress on stimulus and a rise in COVID-19 cases. In his podcast, Peter talked about the sell-off and the political dynamics driving the markets right now. He also drove down to a question nobody seems to want to grapple with: why are the markets and the economy so dependent on and desperate for stimulus?
The mainstream spin on unemployment is that things are improving. The unemployment rate is coming down. The number of weekly jobless claims recently fell below 800,000 for the first time since government lockdowns in response to the pandemic went into high gear last March. But there are some troubling signs that undercut this good-news narrative. The number of long-term unemployed workers is steadily rising.
Gold has been trading sideways for several weeks. But there are all kinds of reasons to be bullish on the yellow metal. So why isn’t the price of gold rising faster? Where are the gold bulls? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey tries to answer that question and discusses some of the reasons people should be buying gold.
