The bull market from 2003 to 2007 was led by dramatic growth in US housing and dramatic growth in China. The Chinese boom drove the demand for commodities and was the major catalyst in the previous cycle. A few weeks ago, Google (GOOGL Alphabet) surpassed
I’m bullish on clean energy over the long term, although it’s been a terrible investment for the past decade and I have not been in it. I’m now starting to get very interested with the fundamentals and technicals starting to align. U.S. President Donald Trump’s
The World Bank estimates that total world population is about 7.43B at the end of 2016. By 2050, the world will have about 9.71B people. That is an annualized 0.79% natural growth rate. Productivity, the other main factor of growth, has been running about 0.5%
The last time our three key Canadian dollar indicators lined up like this, the Canadian dollar rallied from 67 cents to 80 cents in early 2016. The most stable longer-term driver of the Canadian-U.S. Dollar exchange rate is the interest rate differential between short-term bond
We get many questions on foreign currency hedging. When investing globally in developed markets, currency is often the most important consideration in the difference in returns. With the French election uncertainty mostly behind us and most strategists suggesting Europe is getting stronger, what is the
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets this week and word is they will begin planning how to reduce the balance sheet. Yellen has long said the Fed has a plan to do this. At a high level, the US economy has been growing at
The government shutdown. It’s happened before – a lot! In 1995-96, the government was shut down for one month. The Congressional Budget Office estimated it cost the US economy about 0.5 per cent of its GDP that quarter. So, from a major economic perspective it’s
Last week Bank of Canada Governor Poloz tossed a bit of a curveball to investors. There is no doubt the unbelievable Canadian employment numbers have been improving. When I say unbelievable I mean not credible, rather than “wow they have been so impressive”. Despite the
The French elections have the potential to really shake the Trump rally. Those that say we should ignore it because it would be little more than a ‘Brexit’ result where markets dipped for a few days, then rallied strong, are naive. If France leaves the
It seems clear the Liberals do not have an Action Plan for Canada. Since the 2016 budget, the private sector has downgraded the outlook for GDP growth in Canada. In other words, SELL, SELL, SELL. Either they have no confidence in Liberal policies or the