December 2023 Newsletter
Santa Claus? The Legend of Santa Claus can be traced back to a monk named St. Nicholas who was born about 280 A.D. near Myra in modern day Turkey. St. Nicholas the monk gave away all his inherited wealth…
Santa Claus? The Legend of Santa Claus can be traced back to a monk named St. Nicholas who was born about 280 A.D. near Myra in modern day Turkey. St. Nicholas the monk gave away all his inherited wealth…
Artificial Intelligence? Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings were jeopardy grand champions; but this time they were up against a machine: IBM’s Watson. By the end of the 3rd and conclusive match Watson was up by $50,000. It was not…
Higher for Longer Interest Rates? It has taken over a year and a half for interest rates to rise on the long end (over 5-year maturities). That time looks like it is here. We have had an inverted yield…
China? China is big, its land area is only 2% less than the U.S. It has a large population of approximately 1.4 billion. It was the most populous country; sometime this year it is predicted that India will surpass it…
Homes? We just got some good news on inflation, and much of it is because housing costs increases have greatly slowed. In July of 2022 the year over year increase in housing prices was an astronomical +13.9 percent. June of…
Stock Market Surprise? Stocks so far this year have been on a roll of late, with overall close to a 16% return. Nasdaq, with all its tech stocks, is up 39% this year. Small stocks are not faring as well…
Not In My Back Yard ? We have been building roads, sewer plants and many other large community projects for years. Yes, the government can come in and force you to sell your land for projects deemed as for the…
Electric Cars? Some predict that by 2030 50% of new car sales in the U.S. will be electric. Others come in at 30%. That is a wide margin. Who is right? The one who predicts consumer demand and price correctly…
Ukraine War The war has created 7.5 million refugees that are now in other countries. There are approximately the same 7.5 million refugees within Ukraine itself. This comes with unimaginable human costs. Families are being broken apart, kids are growing…
AI Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (Chat GPT) Yes, I used cliff notes in school sometimes. Did it help? Maybe it did. Now with the use of Open AI’s chatbot you can shortcut writing poems and just about any didactic…