After our recent quarterly report, “Has Innovation Bottomed?” Knowledge Leaders Capital CEO and CIO Steven Vannelli, CFA, was invited to be a guest on ARK Invest’s For Your Innovation Podcast. In the episode below, Steve and ARK Invest’s Renato Leggi, CFA, CAIA, discuss not only…
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Given all the confusion in the world around COVID, supply chains, inflation dynamics and war, there are lots of potential externalities that could resolve themselves unexpectedly. We call this the Deus ex Machina scenario. Our analysis follows in our Mid-Quarter Update. Prefer to download this presentation…
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The President today asked Congress for a gasoline tax holiday to alleviate the cost of gasoline and diesel in the country. This is not the solution. With the exception of a 200,000 barrel/day refinery in Garyville, Louisiana, built by Marathon Petroleum in July 2020, there…
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As everyone knows, the labor market has been quite strong, with expectations for the unemployment rate to fall further next week. Much has been made of the relationship between job openings and unemployed people that are in the labor force. The ratio of job openings…
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Today the Federal Open Market Committee raised the fed funds rate (upper bound) to 1% from 50bps. The most surprising element of the press conference was the Chairman dismissing that the committee is not “actively” considering a 75bps hike right now. This sent algos into…
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With France’s polls closing yesterday Emmanuel Macron will now serve a second consecutive term as the president of France, the first to do so since Jacques Chirac in 2002. Heading into the vote, Macron had an 80-90% chance of victory according to analysts, representing a…
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The Federal Reserve has all but cemented expectations for a 25bps rate hike next week. But, events have changed a lot in the last couple weeks that raise a faint hint that the Fed may not hike, despite elevated, persistent inflation. What makes us question…
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After President Biden’s speech, the consensus seemed to coalesce around the idea that the sanctions put forth were not as strong as they possibly could have been. Chiefly, due to a disagreement with Europe, Russia was allowed to remain in the SWIFT payment system—the system…
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Since May 2020, the Chinese Yuan has defied the path of other emerging market currencies, strengthening by almost 12%. This has left it overvalued compared to other emerging market countries. While Yuan strength made sense in 2020 when the USD was weakening. It is curious…
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Below we highlight a few takeaways from Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s confirmation hearing today before the Senate Banking Committee, broken down by topic. -Focus on “less accommodative” moves -Powell made numerous statements indicating that COVID, though prevalent, will not be as pressing in policy decisions…
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Despite the relief rally yesterday, financial conditions have tightened significantly in the last couple weeks. This likely explains why the Fed just made an emergency 50bps cut to the fed funds rate. The graph below highlights that the two main areas of weaker financial conditions…
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Widespread underperformance of Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks is a significant negative indicator for US stocks in our view. In this special report, we present charts of the 30 Dow stocks relative to long-duration US treasury bonds and gold for the last five years. Spoiler:…
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Former Fed Governor and now professor at the University of Rochester, Narayana Kocherlakota penned the following short opinion piece in Bloomberg this morning: Fed Shouldn’t Wait to Cut Interest Rates: Narayana Kocherlakota By Narayana Kocherlakota The world economy is facing a material risk in the…
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Last week we were selected as a “Hidden Gem” at the Inside ETF conference in Hollywood, Florida. Steven Vannelli gave a 3-minute pitch on our investment strategy. Here’s what he said. Knowledge Leaders Hidden Gems 3-min Pitch “Hidden Gems” are 12 under-the-radar ETF ideas…
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As the year ended with global unknowns and market uncertainties weighing on investors’ minds, we sat down with geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan to discuss his outlook for 2019. His top predictions included calls on Brexit, a US-Britain trade deal, China’s exit from world trade, new…
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