opinion columnist

It’s Presidents’ Day, and to honor the nation’s top bosses, I figured an economic scorecard would be helpful. Now, the commander-in-chief probably gets too much blame – or too much credit – for what’s going on in the nation’s business climate. Still, the buck stops at the Oval Office for anything in America. With the cost of living a hot topic, my trusty spreadsheet reviewed how presidential terms fared with the Consumer Price Index dating back to the end of World War II. Now, one challenge in gauging presidential…

Here’s one solid assumption for mortgage rates for 2024 – they’ll act like a yo-yo. Again. To see the extremes that home loans go through, my trusty spreadsheet looked at swings in Freddie Mac’s weekly 30-year average fixed rate going back to 1972. And over the past half-century, the average year’s highest rate was 8.4% vs. a 7% low. That translates to a typical 12-month period having a 1.4 percentage-point swing between the top and bottom mortgage rate. Yes, rate volatility is fairly normal. Three odd years But the…

Stock performance clobbered home prices in 2023, the year after the reverse was true. My trusty spreadsheet looked at a half-century of stock-trading patterns (the Wilshire 5000-stock index) and home-price swings (the Federal Housing Finance Agency US index) to determine how these two assets vary in price fluctuations. Consider that the Wilshire was up 25% in 2023. Only 12 years have fared better since 1974. Why the pop? Stock investors spent much of 2023 worried about a recession. It was only late in the year that…

How out of whack is the housing market? Well, an October poll by LendingTree of 2,045 US adults found 35% want the housing market to crash – highlighted by youthful Gen Z-ers (53%) and millennials (46%). Look, rooting for a bargain is as American as apple pie. Who doesn’t hope for that big sale, deep-discount coupon or holiday pricing to stretch the budget? So why not housing? Affordability anxiety of late is a real fear. Think about the nearly 40% of non-homeowners from Gen Z (ages 18 to 26) and the millennial crowd (27…

Bargains are on the brains of shoppers as the holiday gift-buying season gets into high gear. And talk about information overload: You’d be hard-pressed to miss the flood of “best deals” lists offering tips on which retailers or brands are slashing prices on goods and services. But what if the nation’s official price tracker, the Consumer Price Index, was used as a bargain-hunting tool? INFLATION TRENDS: What’s up? What’s cheaper? What’s next? CLICK HERE! My trusty spreadsheet looked at the CPI’s 330 expenditure…