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Clearly, Not Everyone Is Getting Rich Off The Stock Market

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Well, the NY Fed was out today with its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for Q4 2017. Clearly, Americans are in a lot of debt. Take a look. Just a couple of quick hits from the report. Total U.S. household debt rose $193 billion in the 4th quarter, to a new all-time peak of $13.15 trillion. That's 17.9% above the most recent trough in Q2 2013. Broken down by segment, what do you suppose was the largest gain in percentage terms? Credit cards, with a 3.2% increase. In the picture above, the widening gap represented by the red arrows reflects the fact that non-housing debt is rising at a faster pace than housing debt. Here's what's troubling about that. Below is a picture of the stock market, as represented by the S&P 500 index, over that same period; from the most recent credit trough in Q2 2013 to the end of 2017. And thus, the title of this article. Over that period, the S&P 500 index rose by 75%; from roughly 1,600 to 2,800. Apparently, ho...
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Trumping Trump's Trump Of The Trumped-Up Trump Trade

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It is certainly an interesting world that we live in.

As some of my readers know, I am a contributor on the Seeking Alpha website. As such, I receive daily emails featuring the top articles being featured for the day.

One of the titles in particular jumped out at me this morning. The title was: Did Trump Just Kill The Trump Trade? For whatever reason, it stopped me in my tracks, pondering the question of how many articles I have seen attempting to make more and more use of Trump's name in the title.

Now, not all of them are attention-grabbing in nature. Some flow very naturally, like another one I recently came across: Trump's Comments Send The Dollar Reeling. OK, reasonable enough. But several others along the way have struck me as nothing more than blatant attempts to work Trump's name into the title.

In a spirit of full disclosure, I did it myself on two articles I wrote this past November;  Trump's Deplorable Effects On The ETF Monkey Portfolios and The Trump Reset - ETF Monkey Portfolios.

Why do writers do this? Because of a little thing known as SEO - Search Engine Optimization. Often, a clever title can mean the difference between an article attracting almost no views and a deluge of views. In my case, I hoped to benefit from the Trump name to get a few viewers to take a peek into my model portfolios.

What bothers me is that, in many cases, the content doesn't live up to the flashy title and ends up wasting the reader's time. In contrast, take a look at this article, which doesn't carry a flashy title but presents one of the best discussions I have seen on the challenges of developing a world-class health care system, separate from all the hype and name-calling. 

I hope we do not descend into a world where sound bites mean more than substance. Where tweets garner more attention than a substantive discussion of the issues. When facts become nothing more than inconveniences in the narrative, only to be replaced by "facts" that are more convenient.

So, what did you think of this article? Are you just as offended by my over-the-top use of the Trump name? Or do you think I am onto something?

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Clearly, Not Everyone Is Getting Rich Off The Stock Market

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Well, the NY Fed was out today with its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for Q4 2017. Clearly, Americans are in a lot of debt. Take a look. Just a couple of quick hits from the report. Total U.S. household debt rose $193 billion in the 4th quarter, to a new all-time peak of $13.15 trillion. That's 17.9% above the most recent trough in Q2 2013. Broken down by segment, what do you suppose was the largest gain in percentage terms? Credit cards, with a 3.2% increase. In the picture above, the widening gap represented by the red arrows reflects the fact that non-housing debt is rising at a faster pace than housing debt. Here's what's troubling about that. Below is a picture of the stock market, as represented by the S&P 500 index, over that same period; from the most recent credit trough in Q2 2013 to the end of 2017. And thus, the title of this article. Over that period, the S&P 500 index rose by 75%; from roughly 1,600 to 2,800. Apparently, ho...
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