Bank earnings this week offered a timely reminder that the U.S. consumer remains a far more durable force than many narratives suggest. The data produced by the largest financial institutions paints a picture of accelerating growth and improving credit quality, a combination not often seen. Banks are also finding themselves increasingly tied to the AI …

Consumer sentiment has collapsed irrespective of which metric you look at. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index just crashed to the lowest level in the survey’s history – even below what we saw during the depths of the Great Financial Crisis in 2008-2009, Covid in April-May 2020, and even the stagflationary 1970s. Surely things …

Today, we tackle a topic that we don’t write about a lot relative to its importance—municipal bonds. Why are munis important? A basic principle of investing (and one of the most ignored), Investment outcomes potentially should not be evaluated on returns but on the returns that you keep—returns after taxes. This is where municipal bonds …