Greg Taunt, Author at IASG

While the world focuses on oil prices, a little paid attention to commodity was a big story last week that mostly went unnoticed. The price of Nickel skyrocketed 250%, which caused the LME exchange to suspend trading and put a big Chinese bank in a huge hole.  Not surprisingly, Russia produces a significant quantity of […]

The war in Ukraine is pushing commodity prices well beyond their recent inflation-induced highs, and it appears things may get worse. Bank of America says that commodity prices have seen their strongest start since 1915. Here are some highlights for the week (to confirm these are changes for the week, not the year).  Oil prices […]

“Energy independence is our greatest geopolitical and economic tool and we cannot lose sight of that as instability rises around the globe.” – Joe Manchin on February 17, 2022 It seems that despite this warning and others, this message seems to be getting lost, and we may see real consequences shortly as Russia sits on […]

“Winter is Coming” goes the famous line from Game of Thrones. In that context, it portended trouble ahead. Perhaps, it could also refer to the stock market to begin the year with the lowest January returns since 2008. A saying says that “As January goes, so goes the year.”  The truth is that few are […]

I often think of an offhanded comment from the Chicago Fed Chairman Charlie Evans at a networking event shortly after the financial crisis. He said policymakers didn’t know what would happen after their extraordinary measures following the financial crisis. His point that much of what they did had never been tried before was true. I […]

The year of the pandemic led into another year of COVID but with a hefty dose of inflation. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) in the United States rose 7% in 2021, its highest level in nearly 40 years. The ramifications of this could impact every market going forward, especially as it affects central bank policy, […]

Investors held their collective breath as they waited on Jerome Powell to announce the newest Fed action the week before Christmas.  Central bankers were unanimous in their decision to move to a less accommodative stance, and the market reaction was swift and fierce.  The date, December 19th, 2018, when the Fed lifted the Fed funds […]

What if I told you there was a futures sector that was not only driven by governments but explicitly designed to appreciate over time?  Given the monetary policy of the past few years, many of us intuitively understand the influence that central banks can have on our economics.  What if I told you that corporate […]

In recent years, sustainability has moved from the financial sector’s periphery to the mainstream, and the industry has increasingly embraced a transition to a more sustainable and inclusive economic model. This, in turn, has made ESG investing is a hot topic right now.  Environmental, social, and governance programs look at not only financial factors for […]

If it seems like September is looking like a rough period for the market you might be surprised but you shouldn’t be.  In fact, over the past 50 years, it is the worst performing month of the calendar year.  The chart below shows where the saying, “Sell in May and Go Away”, comes from referring […]

For any profession, once you have done it for a while, some concepts become second nature to the point that you forget that not everyone (or very few) understands them at even a basic level. I find that options are the concept that confuses people the most and perhaps most valuable to understand. The futures […]