Business

Via Political Calculations blog,

Authored by Axel Merk via MerkInvestments.com,

With the stock market and Bitcoin reaching all-time highs, what can possibly go wrong? In offering my thoughts on 2018, I see my role in reminding investors to stress test their portfolios. Is your portfolio built of straw, sticks or brick?

First, let me allege many investors have portfolios built of straw and sticks rather than brick. How do I know this? Here’s a brief check:

According to an analysis from the Tax Policy Center, the Senate's recently passed tax plan will increase the after-tax income of folks in every income bracket.  Of course, there are exceptions to every rule and plenty of arguments to be had between the Left and Right over how the tax savings scraps should be divvied up, but in the aggregate individual tax payers should see their net incomes increase in 2019.

Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

Retail investors are worshipping at the altar of FOMO (fear of missing out). It may prove to be a painful experience.

Never before has retail gotten this aggressively exposed to stocks.

It is undisputed that the last 2 quarters have demonstrated an impressive jump in corporate earnings growth, if mostly due to a beneficial base effect from plunging 2016 earnings which pushed them below levels reached in 2014. And naturally, this rebound has been more than priced into a market which has seen substantial multiple expansion since the Trump election to boot. But what is much more important for the market is what corporate earnings look like in the future, and it is here that Bank of America has just raised a very troubling red flag.