presidential election

Submitted by Michael Jabara Carley via Strategic-Culture.org,

2016 was chock-full of surprises, both in markets and in politics.

As Goldman's Allison Nathan explains, the year began with a perfect storm of worries that had become all too familiar already in 2015. Oil prices plunged and fears of faltering growth and a sharp depreciation of China’s currency escalated, driving disruptive sell-offs in credit and other risk assets. Confidence in global growth faltered, particularly after an anemic US GDP report for Q1.

This article by David Haggith was first published on The Great Recession Blog:

Since Trump’s election, the US stock market has climbed unstoppably along a remarkably steep path to round off at a teetering height. Is this the irrational exuberance that typically marks the last push before a perilous plunge, or is the market reaching escape velocity from the relentless gravity of the Great Recession? 

Submitted by Eric Bush via Gavekal Capital blog,

Most of the time not a whole lot actually changes in the markets over the course of a month. For example, small cap stocks tend to outperform large cap stocks by a rather mundane 31 bps over the course of a month on average going back to 1996. There are, however, periods of time when extreme moves do occur over the course of a month. We have just experienced one of those times.

As speculation continues to swirl over whether or not Biden will make a run for the Presidency in 2020, he has maintained a curious presence in the media in recent weeks and recently offered some pretty harsh critiques of the Clinton campaign when he sat down with the Los Angeles Times.  Mimicking comments made by Neera Tanden which were exposed by Wikileaks, Biden suggested that Hillary lost primarily because she never "really figured out why she was running."  Per The Hill: