Fed Follies on Full Display

March 21, 2025 The University of Michigan Consumer confidence survey for March plunged to 57.9 versus the estimate of 63 and 65.7 in the month prior. And yet, inflation expectations in the same survey hit a 32-year high of 4.9%. Stagflation is the word that comes to...

Cash is King for Now

March 3, 2025 Tariff threats and a shrinking labor force put downward pressure on stocks and the economy. The S&P 500 is trading at 22x the forward 12-month EPS target, which is predicting an increase of 13% in EPS. The problem is that the 10-year average PE ratio...

Liquidity and Inflation

February 7th, 2025 I want to expand a bit on market liquidity and why modeling it is so crucial to the economy, inflation, and money management. Liquidity is the progenitor of Pento Portfolio Strategies’ Inflation Deflation and Economic Cycle (IDEC) model. It is the...

Elections, Inflation, and the Bond Market 

November 22, 2024 The Federal Reserve believes inflation is no longer a concern for consumers and the time has come to ensure the rate of change of prices does not decline any further. To this point, Susan Collins, the Boston Federal Reserve President, said recently...