The surprises should be on the upside. It all adds up to very good fourth-quarter numbers.

The Fed’s going to be raising rates because it realizes that good times will be followed by bad times, … To have a rate of one percent whenever we have bad times again is simply...

It’s been clear that the Fed concluded rates were too low,

After rounding up all the usual bearish suspects to blame for the market’s disappointing performance this year, I’ve narrowed the problem to the price of oil, … Investors fear that higher energy costs must eventually...

The market goes through these bizarre mood swings. All of a sudden, people are concerned that we’re in a soft patch and that it may get worse before it gets better.

The Fed stopped raising rates in 1995 and I think they will do so again in 2006.

Earnings are still going to grow as interest rates and inflation remain low.

Earnings will recover and valuation multiples, which got crushed, will get back to where they were at the beginning of the year,

For two years, we’ve seen this tremendous increase in prices, yet the core inflation rate has stayed at 2.3 percent or less, and the only explanation for that is globalization means inflation is contained.

Because of competitive pressures, it is difficult to raise prices. Companies have to raise their productivity, which keeps inflation down.

I think the folks at the Fed would like to raise the federal funds rate as high as they can short of seriously depressing economic growth. They want to make sure they have plenty of...

The actual end users, the businesses that actually need these commodities, are discovering that they are making more money by accumulating inventory than turning it into products. It’s sort of creating a panic-buying situation, scrambling...

Nobody believed in the model when it said that stocks were 60 percent overvalued and nobody believes in it now, … Valuation is like beauty — it’s in the eye of the beholder.

These people could be in some serious trouble.

What is really new in the commodity world is the extent to which hard commodities have been converted to financial assets through exchange-traded funds and hedge funds.

The bigger bubble is actually in the financing of homes.

There could be a severe recession. That doesn’t mean there won’t be life on the planet Earth in the year 2000, 2001 and beyond.

Early in 2004, I predicted that energy’s share of the S&P 500’s market capitalization would rise from just below 6% at that time to 15% before the end of the decade. In January, its market-cap...

the government is one of the choke points in the year 2000 problem. It’s one of the areas where we could have disruptions that could in fact produce a recession.

[Investors should keep that experience of 1999 and early 2000 in mind when looking at the model.] The model is not a market timing tool, … Stocks could stay undervalued for a while.

If Y2K is a disaster it will be a global one, not a local one,

When fixed-income investors conclude that the central bank isn’t going to raise rates any time soon, … there tends to be a convergence of rates.

[And so Daiei keeps stumbling along, introducing competitive pressures that shouldn’t be there — prices fall and the entire industry struggles.] Deflation, … is companies that are losing money not going out of business.