Today, Oracle disclosed that its AI cloud business—particularly server rentals using Nvidia chips—is yielding very slim profit margins. That news weighed on the stock market, especially on technology stocks. Oracle’s stock price fell 2.5%. The Magnificent-7 declined 1.1%. Financial

Semiconductor stocks have certainly benefited from the AI boom. All those data centers being built will be filled with chips (chart). All those autonomous-driving vehicles will also be stuffed with chips, and so will humanoid robots. And they will

From time to time, we will review and update some of our good market calls. We hope this provides a helpful perspective on our approach to market forecasting. Today, let’s review and update our thoughts on the outlook for gold: (1) We first

This is a quiet week for key economic data releases, but it is even quieter due to the ongoing government shutdown. For financial markets, this informational void is equivalent to flying blind. That also applies to Fed officials who

We are raising our year-end S&P 500 target back to 7000. We started the year there, but lowered it earlier this year in response to Trump’s Tariff Turmoil. We began raising our forecast again during the spring, when we

The stock market is discounting the ongoing resilience of the economy and corporate earnings. It is discounting that the odds of a recession over the rest of the Roaring 2020s are low. The longer the economy is expected to

The Russell 2000 small-cap stock price index is outperforming the S&P 600, another small-cap index (chart). The former includes many more companies that are losing money than the latter. This is yet another sign of mounting speculative froth in

The S&P 500 SPDR ETF (SPY) closed today at 666 (chart). I have fond memories of that number. I wrote on March 16, 2009: “We’ve been to Hades and back. The S&P 500 bottomed last week on March 6

In his post-FOMC press conference on September 17, Fed Chair Jerome Powell stated that Fed policy remains tight notwithstanding the latest rate cut: “What we can say is this, that over the course of this year we’ve kept our

Monthly employment reports have been suspenseful enough in recent months, but the real drama surrounding September’s hotly anticipated figures is whether they will even be released on Friday. They won’t be if the government shuts down on October 1

The financial markets have become jittery lately due to concerns about high valuation multiples, particularly among AI stocks, and a potential government shutdown. President Donald Trump reportedly will meet with the top four congressional leaders at the White House on

The Fed just won’t listen to us. Last year, we warned Fed officials not to cut the federal funds rate (FFR) because we had more confidence in the economy than they did. We also observed that inflation remained above

Before you know it, September will be over. It is likely to defy the month’s reputation of being a bad one for stocks (chart). Instead, the S&P 500 rose to a new record high of 6693.75 on Monday, September

During a speech in Providence, Rhode Island today, Fed Chair Jerome Powell was asked whether he and his colleagues give any weight to the impact of their monetary policies on financial markets. He responded: “We do look at overall

It’s a big world with lots of investment opportunities. We continue to favor the United States, but it’s hard to overweight the US when it already accounts for 64.7% of the market capitalization of the All Country World (ACW)