Helping our clients achieve superior risk-adjusted portfolio performance
is Merk's mission

NY Fed's Williams can be very convincing. Well, very convinced at least. Let's see whether it's enough to sway the team. Correction, sway the debating club. x.com/AxelMerk/statu…

The December meeting will be less interesting for the rate that will be set, but for the voting behavior -- will the Fed move from consensus driven to true debate? The stakes were just raised as rate cut expectations for the December 10 meeting jumped to 68% this morning from x.com/AxelMerk/statu…

Inflation-reduction stimulus, 🇯🇵 edition: Japan just rolled out a $135B package.
For perspective, relative to GDP size, that’s like the U.S. announcing a $1T stimulus.
cnbc.com/2025/11/21/jap…

“AI leads to 30% unemployment” — with due respect, that’s bullshit.

20% unemployment can be the result of an epic credit bust or of excess government regulation.

While AI will displace people as the Industrial Revolution, amongst others, have, immense opportunities are opened

AGI cannot be achieved without understanding causation.
ChatGPT had a fit as AI evangelists claim AGI can be achieved with pattern recognition alone.
So I went to the core of the issue, asking ChatGPT whether human progress is possible without understanding causation. Answer: No

I trust you've seen the $100mm+ home sales in the US.

Did you know that in France, you can buy a chateau for less than $5mm?

The difference? The French have long learned that upkeep is extremely expensive, so they discount these prized assets.
mansionglobal.com/articles/frenc…

As we are digesting the "news" of stale economic data, keep in mind that some data crunchers in the future will miss this as they run long term studies incorporating these data. This is what makes the older generation a tad wiser because they've experienced this sort stuff.