“The Trump Administration last year recognized the importance of rare earths elements – albeit as an after-thought – when it pulled them off a list of Chinese imports to be hit with US tariffs. China mines about 80% of the 17 elements that appear on the Periodic Table, and has a lock on about 90…

The results of the European Union’s Parliamentary elections, held the last weekend in May, were welcomed by investors as being not as bad as many had feared.

My note today puzzles over the Fed’s sitting on the sidelines while other central bankers act together to mitigate a growing risk to national economies and the global financial system.

In advance of the release of the FOMC’s May minutes, speculation in the press and by financial market participants was that the Committee might cut the federal funds target rate. The main line of conjecture centered on how long the FOMC could continue to miss its inflation target on the downside…

“[On Saturday, May 25,] more than 980 cadets became army second lieutenants at West Point’s football stadium. America’s Vice-President, Mike Pence, told them President Trump has proposed a $750bn defense budget for 2020 and said the US ‘is once again embracing our role as the leader of the free…

The Cumberland Advisors Week in Review is a recap of news, commentary, and opinion from our team. These are not revised assessments, and circumstances may have changed in the market from the time of original publication. We also include older commentaries that our editors have determined may be…

From the onset of the Trump trade war we’ve argued that the broad-brush tariffs advocated by Peter Navarro were damaging and that a very targeted approach on security and intellectual property would have been better. Finally, the tariff fight with China is being defined over 5G, which is where…

Toward the end of a week during which global markets were pummeled by a sudden worsening in the prospects for a trade agreement between China and the US, President Trump announced two positive developments in US trade relations with our allies.

My friend George Friedman is an internationally known geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs and the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures (https://geopoliticalfutures.com/).

Cumberland Advisors Week in Review (May 13, 2019 - May 17, 2019)May 18, 2019