Reports are that John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, has been targeted as a potential candidate for Fed vice chairman. President Williams is scheduled to vote as one of the five sitting reserve bank presidents on the FOMC in 2018. What would his appointment…

Next week the World Economic Forum (WEF) will host its 48th annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, drawing together a large number of leaders from governments (including President Trump), international organizations, business, academia, and civil society. The title for this year’s meeting is…

The US stock market had a marvelous year in 2017. The major benchmark S&P 500 returned 21.60%[1] including dividends. But savvy investors probably noticed that there were some significant discrepancies among the major indexes: If you chose the tech-heavy NASDAQ composite, you would have made…

We think that stocks in the US market will be fully valued when the S&P 500 Index hits the 3000 mark by the end of this decade. Here’s why.

A classic value method is to observe and estimate the equity risk premium (ERP). This method compares the earnings yield (earnings divided by…

We thank readers for their diverse and sometimes intense responses to our recent comments about marijuana legalization in California and about the reversal of a US policy.

The link to that piece is here: http://www.cumber.com/california-high-on-cannabinoid-wellness/.

Many good…

“California High on Cannabinoid Wellness” is the title to this commentary which was written a few days ago.

Now we must ask: “What about the rest of the nation?”

By yearend, 8 states will have recreational Marijuana; 29 will have medical usage. Meanwhile a reversal of established…

On Wednesday, the Fed released the minutes of the FOMC’s December meeting.  As usual, the minutes followed the standard format, mirroring the way presentations and discussions proceed at FOMC meetings.  It began with a brief summary report by the manager of the Open Market Desk in New…

The fourth quarter was dominated by tax reform and its effects on the supply and pricing of municipal bonds. The prospect that one of President Trump’s major initiatives would finally be passed by year-end buoyed the stock market http://www.cumber.com/market-volatility-etf-portfolio-4q-2017-…

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico entered the fourth quarter having suffered one of the most devastating natural disasters in the island’s history. Hurricane Maria left billions of dollars in damage in its wake, including both infrastructure damage and economic losses. The human costs have been…

Recognizing strengths and weaknesses among primary asset classes is the core goal of our Tactical Trend strategy. The strategy seeks to identify relative strength and trend strength in an attempt to allocate capital to the strongest asset classes while underweighting or eliminating exposure to…