Today was a very sad day with Russia executing a rather substantial invasion of Ukraine.  The events certainly shook up markets, causing a massive selloff to begin the day, only with the indices ending up positive, bolstered by Technology stocks.  It’s obviously a tragic scenario and it seems as though Putin is committed to “demilitarize”...Read More

The Russia/Ukraine spat has definitely heated up with Russia formally recognizing the two provinces in Eastern Ukraine that it already had informal control over.  Obviously things are fluid and can always devolve further, but markets seems to be pricing in a decent amount of this risk currently.  Energy and commodities seem like the biggest beneficiary...Read More

Heightened concerns about military conflict between Russia and Ukraine have rattled markets the past two weeks. Just today, the S&P 500 was down 2.12% and the Nasdaq was down 2.88%.  The 30 second version is that Russia wants assurances that Ukraine won’t join NATO and has long-term cultural affinity with the territory.  Ukraine wants its...Read More

Today we got the latest update on the Consumer Pricing Index (CPI) and it was a doozy, showing annual inflation of 7.5%.  As you can see on the image above, the Real Fed Funds Rate (Fed Funds Rate Minus CPI) is now a negative 7.4%, which is the lowest since 1974.  This means that money...Read More