The Friday before the election, our quantitative election model forecasted that Donald Trump was going to be the 45th President of the United States. I didn’t believe it myself, yet I didn’t question whether the model was broken. After all, it’s accuracy rate has been higher than 80%, correcting predicting every election since 1996. After a barrage of media interviews where some questioned whether I was just a shill for Mr. Trump, the election came and he was in fact […]
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The Friday before the election, our quantitative election model forecasted that Donald Trump was going to be the 45th President of the United States. I didn’t believe it myself, yet I didn’t question whether the model was broken. After all, it’s accuracy rate has been higher than 80%, correcting predicting every election since 1996. After a barrage of media interviews where some questioned whether I was just a shill for Mr. Trump, the election came and he was in fact […]
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Continuing the theme of recession, two of my favorite off the beaten path economic indicators are below. The first is the Restaurant Performance Index, which essentially measures the health of the average consumer rather than the Wall Street executive spending $1000+ per couple at Masa or Per Se in New York City. You can see on the left side of the chart that this index steadily weakened well before the crisis hit and was solidly below the 100 level which […]
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There has been renewed chatter lately about the U.S. economy being on the verge of recession. It’s not as loud as we (wrongly) heard in 2011, but it’s definitely growing. I vividly remember the Economic Cycle Research Institute doing interviews on CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg and just about every major financial website, pounding the table that there was almost 100% chance of recession in 2011 and their indicators were “never” wrong. “Never” is one of those words I don’t typically […]
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I did an interview with FOX Business on Friday where I offered my comments on the overblown mess at JP Morgan, which is the story of the day/week. I also opined that the next recession in the US will likely be seen in 2013 or 2014. I was somewhat surpised that the anchor thought that was so outrageous. Except for the 1990s, we typically see one or two recessions per decade with one being more severe than the other when […]
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