October 15, 2022 | Inflation, Strong Dollar, Crypto, Cars, Oil, Inflation, Fossil Fuels, Nike, Businesses, Used Cars, Lumber Prices, & Meme Stocks

<p>Inflation</p> <p>Inflation numbers were released today rising 8.2% over the past year. Initially the markets were down about 2% but by the end of the day markets rallied up over 2%. Perhaps inflation is not as bad going forward as we think. One reason for that is the lapping of year over year. September 2021 inflation began increasing rising 5.4%, October 2021 at 6.2%, November 2021 up 6.8% and December 2021 inflation increased by 7%. What I believe is happening and why I think we will see inflation slow down its supply chains have improved, consumers have pulled back on some of their spending (reducing demand) and as we lap higher inflation numbers from the previous year the percent growth will not be as high. </p> <p>Tomorrow morning Friday the 14th the big banks release their third-quarter earnings. Very important to hear what they say if there is not unexpected bad news in the reports I believe it would be seen as a positive and we could have another rally.</p> <p>Strong Dollar</p> <p>Earnings will be coming out over the next few weeks and the strong dollar which is up about 17% against the weighted index could play havoc on some companies with big earnings coming from overseas.</p> <p>I was surprised to see that QUALCOMM gets 96% of its revenue from outside the US. Other companies that you need to watch out for would be caterpillar with 62% of revenue from outside the US and even meta-platforms and Netflix both receive 59% of the revenue from outside the US. Another surprise to me was Citigroup with 52% of revenue from outside the US.</p> <p>Crypto</p> <p>With the decline in the crypto market, investors are becoming less comfortable with the space. According to a recent Bankrate survey, in 2021, nearly 35% of Americans said they had some level of comfort investing in digital currencies, compared to about 21% in 2022. Millennials saw an even larger fall with 49% in 2021 saying they had some comfort level investing in digital currencies and that fell to almost 29% in 2022. My guess of why this is the case i