Month: July 2022

Authored by Ray Youssef via BitcoinMagazine.com,

There are a myriad of examples of bitcoin financially enabling people around the world despite common notions that bitcoin is useless…

Bitcoin has the power to help real people, but the “Bitcoin is useless” narrative still exists. Traveling on the ground in the emerging world, I’ve heard hundreds of stories from people who’ve said that Bitcoin has changed their lives for the better. And it’s no surprise. People are using Bitcoin for remittances, e-commerce, wealth preservation and social good. It’s the strongest solution for the unbanked, giving people the opportunity to put the financial power back into their own hands. So how do we change the narrative? Only with education can we break through the noise and show the rest of the world what Bitcoin can really do.

Over the last few months I’ve traveled through the U.S., South America and Europe, attending meetups, events and speaking with our users. One of my stops was the Oslo Freedom Forum, where I was lucky enough to meet activists from all over the world who are fighting for freedom. Bitcoin not only provides freedom from government control, but provides access to the global economy. It’s the people who are on the ground spreading this message that will really change the world.

BITCOIN IS FREEDOM

I’ve heard Farida Nabourema speak many times, and I continue to be inspired by her story. Her work fighting for democracy in Togo is the work of a true hero. In a country where people are silenced for speaking out, or prevented from receiving money from their family or friends outside the country, Nabourema is showing the way out. Bitcoin offers an alternative to traditional finance that is permissionless, borderless and inclusive of everyone. And now with Bitcoin, the people of Togo can take control of their financial future.

Back in 2020, the people of Nigeria were fighting against police brutality though the #EndSARS protests. Ire Aderinokun witnessed what it was like to be shut out by the banking system when the government froze bank accounts. Instead, the Feminist Coalition turned to Bitcoin to continue raising funds for their efforts.

Another activist I admire is Roya Mahboob, one of the first people to introduce Bitcoin to Afghanistan. Understanding the opportunities that Bitcoin could provide, Mahboob paid her female employees in bitcoin. For some, it was a way out from under the government — for others, it was a sense of independence they didn’t have before. Bitcoin not only provides sovereignty, but a sense of ownership. Thanks to people like Mahboob, more people are learning that.

BITCOIN ON THE GROUND

Hearing these stories confirms that the key to global adoption comes from the ground up. I strongly believe in the power of local education, and in order to get to a billion Bitcoiners, we need to listen to the needs of different communities. I’ve been on the ground in communities all around the world to learn more about how Bitcoin can help the little guy. Take El Salvador, for example: while bitcoin is legal tender there’s still a massive need for education. Nathaly Maria Cortez from El Salvador came to our education center in the country to learn more about Bitcoin. She now advises her family and friends that do not have access to banking or the traditional financial system. Another user, Don Walter, has seen firsthand how Bitcoin has transformed his community through bitcoin donations. I could go on.

CHANGING THE NARRATIVE

These stories are just a handful of the many voices who have now experienced the power of Bitcoin firsthand. Farida once shared that you cannot have independence without monetary independence and that is what Bitcoin truly provides for the first time. All around the world, Bitcoin is creating opportunities for people who have limited financial access. It’s only through Bitcoin education and its real use cases that we can inspire even more people to take part in this financial revolution.

Last week’s primary voting in New York City was a complete debacle – as the city’s Board of Elections botched everything from polling locations opening late because of ‘lost keys,’ to missing equipment, to unannounced relocations of voting sites, to a lack of Republican ballots across at least three Big Apple election sites.

“We showed up to the poll site in Brooklyn, we showed up at 5 a.m. … and there was no key,” Spencer Mestel, a freelance writer, told the New York Post on Tuesday afternoon, adding that he saw poll workers turn away an elderly woman with a walker because they couldn’t get in.

“The police officer on site didn’t have a key, the Board of Elections didn’t give [the site coordinator] a key, I watched her call the Board of Election multiple times … [but] no one helped us,” added the journalist who has served as a NYC election worker for the past decade.

The building was eventually unlocked at 7:30 a.m. by the building’s superintendent – more than 90 minutes after voters should have been able to start casting ballots.

Meanwhile, the Board of Elections failed to deliver equipment to one south Brooklyn location.

It’s 6:30 AM on election day and my poll site at PS 15 in Red Hook is not open because @BOENYC has not brought them equipment and they don’t know how long it will be. Voters are getting turned away.

— Molly Moser (@MollyMoser6) June 28, 2022

And at PS 22 in Crown Heights, New Yorkers weren’t able to vote before work, because of a “technical emergency!” according to a photo shared on Twitter by activist and writer Stephen Lurie. -NY Post

Far poorer cities in far poorer countries regularly run efficient elections where everyone can vote.

The politicians and cronies of New York City and the state *choose* our local democracy to be this bad.

— Stephen Lurie (@luriethereal) June 28, 2022

Also disturbing –  polling locations had been changed without the BOE informing anyone.

Thanks @BOENYC for changing my polling place without notifying me turnout was already gonna be great today

— Reed Dunlea (@ReedDunlea) June 28, 2022

The BOE’s response? Election day had gone “very smoothly” and voters had been notified of site changes.

“If a human error occurs, it’s regretful and, in large measure, we correct immediately,” said BOE deputy executive director, Vinny Ignizio. “All told, we’ll run eight elections this year and this primary election has run very smoothly.”

Speaking of human error – at least three NYC election sites told voters they had no Republican ballots, according to the Post.

One voter, Ed Gavin, 62, arrived at his Bronx polling site in Spuyten Duyvil around 8:15 a.m. to cast his vote for GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino but after checking in with a poll worker, he was handed a Democratic ballot instead, he said. -NYP

“My party never came up, my political preferences were never discussed … I opened the sleeve and I saw the names of Tom Suozzi, Kathy Hochul and Jumaane Williams. These were all Democrats for governor,” said Gavin, a retired Department of Correction deputy warden. “I flipped it over because I thought maybe the Republicans were on the back but there were no Republicans.“

“They told me ‘we don’t have any Republican ballots,'” he added. “I said to the gentleman, ‘that is very concerning.’”

The Post verified the lack of Republican ballots at the polling site Gavin visited.

“We couldn’t find the ballots earlier, but we have them now,” said a poll worker.

Gavin was pissed..

“This is the most important gubernatorial election of my lifetime because crime is on the ballot, bail reform is on the ballot, criminal justice is on the ballot,” he said, adding “[Former Gov. Andrew] Cuomo essentially ruined this state … with the state of the city right now, we need a Republican in power.”

After he reported the problem to the BoE, a rep said they would “correct it immediately.”

Republican strategist Candice Giove had the same thing happen in Bushwick, Brooklyn around 11 a.m.

“I was handed a Democratic ballot and I realized when I opened the folder and I saw Kathy Hochul’s name,” she told the Post, adding that she told the poll worker ‘I’m not a Democrat, I’m a Republican,’ to which the poll worker replied, “We don’t have any Republican ballots.”

After they went back and looked, workers found a stack of Republican ballots “shrink wrapped under a bunch” of other things – after which she was able to cast her vote.

The list goes on:

Harlem resident Eric Larsen, a registered Republican, told The Post an election worker provided him with a Democratic Primary ballot, before falsely insisting a Republican Primary wasn’t being held Tuesday. 

A different staffer then apologized, acknowledged the existence of the GOP primary, and scrambled to find a Republican ballot in a cabinet. 

“I know that Central Harlem is predominantly Democratic, but I found it hard to believe that a polling location even in a mostly Democratic location wouldn’t have had enough Republican ballots by the middle of the day on primary day,” said Larsen, who works in finance. “I did eventually get one … [but] they gave me a hard time.” -NY Post

In short, levels of ‘human error’ are once again off the charts.

Authored by Matt Rosenberg via Wirepoints.org,

As crime continues to roil economic and social life in post-George Floyd, post-COVID Chicago, getting policing and criminal justice right are crucial. City officials are failing at that task.

We’re already seen anemic rates of arrest and prosecutions in Chicago, accompanied by finger-pointing between politicians over crime and the court system. And years of no support from city leadership, anti-policing legislation and the damaging rhetoric of the “defund” movement have taken a toll on Chicago police morale and manpower.

All that has spread the police force so thin that, in 2021, one of law enforcement’s most basic functions, responding to high-priority emergency service calls in a timely manner, was regularly beyond their capacity.

New data uncovered by Wirepoints through public records requests to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) reveal that in 2021 there were 406,829 incidents of high-priority emergency service calls for which there were no police available to respond.

That was 52 percent of the 788,000 high-priority 911 service calls dispatched in 2021.

High priority calls include Priority Level 1 incidents, which represent “an imminent threat to life, bodily injury, or major property damage/loss,” and Priority Level 2 incidents when “timely police action…has the potential to affect the outcome of an incident.”

In pre-George Floyd, pre-COVID 2019, there were only 156,016 such instances for which dispatchers had no police available to send – 19 percent of the total number of high priority 911 service calls made that year. We have requested parallel data for 2020.

The 2021 high priority numbers include, among many other calls:

• 14,955 – assaults in progress. 

• 17,828 – batteries in progress. 

• 16,350 – person with a gun.

• 5,210 – person with a knife.

• 12,787 – shots fired (reports from people, not the city’s automated “Shotspotter”)

• 1,352 – person shot.

• 887 – person stabbed. 

• 14,265 – domestic battery. 

Nor were there police available for 49,686 domestic disturbances or 9,458 mental health disturbances. Or 3,386 dispatches for a robbery that had just occurred. Or the 2,427 dispatches about someone threatening suicide and the 2,951 dispatches stemming from reported violations of a court protection order. (For the full list of service calls, see the CPD’s FOIA response below).

Emergency police dispatches and call backlogs

Chicago police handled about 1.3 million dispatched 911 calls for service each year between 2019 and 2021. The data comes from a dashboard kept by the city’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). OIG numbers come straight from the Office of Emergency Operations and Communications, which runs the city’s 911 center. 

About 800,000 of the calls for service each year are high priority (priorities 1 and 2), about 60 percent of the total.

While the number of emergency calls for service has remained consistent, there has been a considerable jump in the number of periods in which 911 dispatchers could find no takers for urgent calls of help needed. 

Those periods of backlogged dispatches are known by the somewhat misleading name of radio assignments pending or “RAP”.

RAPs occur and are tracked on a police district-by-district basis (there are 24 separate police districts in Chicago). It’s important to note that a RAP is not one delayed response to one dispatch. Instead, police representatives informed Wirepoints it is “a range of time in which no dispatchable resources are available in the District/dispatch group.”

A RAP is declared over only after all delayed responses to high-priority 911 dispatches have been cleared by police arriving on scene.

The numbers of annual reported RAPs grew from 5,077 in 2019 to 11,721 in 2021, up more than 130 percent. 

RAPs are to be avoided if at all possible, according to CPD’s own directive to staff on using its radio communications system. It says field supervisors should repeatedly check all available patrol and special unit personnel on duty to see if they can redeploy to new and high-priority dispatch requests, and that supervisors can deny lunches, personal breaks, and station assignments until the backlog ends.

As the number of RAP periods have grown, so, too, have the volume of high-priority, incident-specific 911 dispatches that weren’t answered in a timely manner. As mentioned above, there were 156,000 high-priority incidents in 2019, but more than 400,000 in 2021.

Waiting for help

High priority dispatches can wait as long as an hour, even two hours, for a response during RAPs. 

Last summer, a Chicago 911 dispatcher working the violent 11th Police District on the West Side was captured by Chicago Scanner’s Twitter account in revealing audio of backlogged dispatch call-outs. 

Listen to the audio here from Chicago Scanner via crime news website CWB Chicago. 

Listening to the audio, Wirepoints could clearly discern details of 36 specific languishing dispatch requests. There were three noise complaints, two burglar alarm calls, four batteries in progress, eight instances of shots fired and seven domestic disturbances. 

Also backlogged with no timely response were a theft, a robbery, a stabbing, a domestic battery, a violation of a protection order, a suspicious person, a mental health disturbance, a large crowd disturbance, drag racing, another disturbance, an EMS vehicle needed, and “a citizen waiting for an assist for 102 minutes at Roosevelt and Central Park.”  

Of the response lag times of the 36 audible incidents reported, 13 were close to or in excess of two hours; 12 were close to or in excess of an hour; and most of the rest were clustered at 20 to 40 minutes each. 

Unfortunately, Wirepoints can’t determine just how long RAPs typically last. In a recent FOIA for 911 backlog details, Wirepoints asked for the average length of backlog periods in recent years. CPD said no such data existed. 

Although field supervisors are instructed under a CPD directive to “note in the supervisor’s management log (CPD-11.455) the time the RAP started, efforts made to end the RAP, and the time the RAP ended,” those records are paper only, not electronic, and they are reportedly not retained.

*  *  *

To many observers in Chicago, the increase in RAPs is one more indication of the need to restore police manpower to previous levels. The count of active sworn officers has fallen to 11,638 in June of this year, down from 13,251 in July of 2019, according to an OIG dashboard. 

But Chicago politicians, Cook County judges, prosecutors and state lawmakers will have to make policing a far more attractive proposition than it is today to repair the damaged morale that’s helping drive the ongoing exodus of sworn officers. 

Appendix

CPD 1st FOIA response: Count of Service Calls Occurring During Radio Assignments Pending, 2021

CPD 2nd FOIA response: Count of Service Calls Occurring During Radio Assignments Pending, 2019

A little over a week ago Ukraine’s military began showing off it newly acquired long-rage rocket systems from the US by uploading videos of launches against Russian forces. 

Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov announced last month, “HIMARS have arrived to Ukraine. Thank you to my colleague and friend SecDef Lloyd J. Austin III for these powerful tools! Summer will be hot for Russian occupiers. And the last one for some of them,” in reference to the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems.

Already, Ukraine’s forces and their American backers are touting that they’ve been able to target and strike Russian command centers with the HIMARS, which are well past the front lines.

The Hill has cited a senior US defense official who said Ukraine is now having “a good deal of success” with the recently deployed HIMARS rockets, particularly in the hotspot of current fighting, the Donbas in the east of the country.

“Because it is such a precise, longer-range system, Ukrainians are able to carefully select targets that will undermine the effort by Russia in a more systematic way, certainly than they would be able to do with the shorter-range artillery systems,” the Pentagon official said further.

Six 200-pound rockets slammed into the Russian position, largely destroying it, said Lt. Koval, who commands 2 HIMARS batteries (launchers). The Russian base was one of about 10 high-value positions Lt. Koval says Ukraine has hit in the 2 weeks since taking charge of the systems pic.twitter.com/vEVjsbFJGJ

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) July 2, 2022

“What you see is the Ukrainians are actually systematically selecting targets and then accurately hitting them, thus providing this, you know, precise method of degrading Russian capability,” the official added. “I see them being able to continue to use this throughout Donbas.”

At the moment, only four are reportedly in use on the battlefield, after lately arriving, but four more were pledged starting last month. The somewhat slow rollout of the systems is related to the time-gap of training Ukrainian operators on how to use them effectively.

A Russ­ian field head­quar­ters has been frus­trat­ingly be­yond the range of Lt. Va­len­tyn Ko­val’s So­viet-era ar­tillery. That changed with the arrival of HIMARS. “We un­der­stand from this as­sistance that we’re not alone in this fight.” @stephenkalin https://t.co/JsWOHgbpNo

— Matthew Luxmoore (@mjluxmoore) July 2, 2022

The HIMARS being provided to the Ukrainians are estimated to be able to hit targets about 40 to 50 miles away, which from the administration’s standpoint marks a significant improvement in range, but still makes it unlikely the missiles could be used to strike within Russian territory, which Biden had expressly said he wants to avoid.

The US has said that Ukraine’s military leadership has provided “assurances” it won’t use the newly provided systems to attack Russian territory, amid persisting fears Washington and Moscow could enter direct conflict.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Supreme Court decided on June 30 to hear an important new case that Republicans hope will re-empower state legislatures to make rules for redistricting and governing congressional and presidential elections.

Republicans say the U.S. Constitution has always directly authorized state legislatures to make rules for the conduct of elections, including presidential elections. Democrats say this idea, encompassed by the Independent State Legislature Doctrine, is a fringe conservative legal theory that could endanger voting rights. The Supreme Court has reportedly never ruled on the doctrine.

The doctrine, if endorsed by the high court, could allow state legislatures to select presidential electors in disputed elections, something critics decry as a threat to democracy.

Election law expert J. Christian Adams, a former U.S. Department of Justice civil rights attorney who now heads the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group, praised the Supreme Court for granting the case, which he said was “very important.”

“It means that the Court may take up all the nonsense that has been occurring over the last 10 years,” Adams told The Epoch Times by email.

In a series of Twitter posts, Democratic Party attorney and election law activist Marc Elias denounced the court’s decision to hear the case.

“The Supreme Court will hear a case next term that may validate the dangerous independent state legislature theory,” Elias wrote.

“Congress must enact comprehensive voting rights and anti-subversion legislation before it’s too late,” he wrote, adding “the future of our democracy is on the docket.”

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear a case next term that would give state legislatures huge power over elections is the biggest threat to our democracy since January 6. https://t.co/XHXns1ZoWZ

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 1, 2022

The doctrine has been in the news because conservative Republican activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent emails to 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona urging them to choose the state’s presidential electors despite the disputed popular vote tallies showing Democrat Joe Biden had won the state, The Washington Post reported June 10.

The emails were sent Nov. 9, 2020, after media outlets had called the Arizona race for Biden. The efforts by Republicans to change the result in Arizona were unsuccessful and ultimately the state’s 11 votes in the Electoral College were awarded to Biden.

In her emails, Ginni Thomas, a supporter of then-President Donald Trump, asked Arizona legislators to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure” and asserted that the responsibility to select electors was “yours and yours alone.” Lawmakers, she wrote, had the “power to fight back against fraud” and “ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.”

The emails attracted the attention of the U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, security breach at the U.S. Capitol that delayed official congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election by several hours. Democrats also say there is a conflict of interest because Justice Thomas will participate in the court case about the independent state legislature doctrine. Through her lawyers, Ginni Thomas is resisting committee demands that she testify in the ongoing probe that many Republicans, including Trump, say is a sham.

Read more here…

Tesla came out today and said that it delivered just 254,695 vehicles for Q2 2022, as the company hit snags due to its Shanghai shutdown and supply chain issues.

Despite this, the company’s June month was the highest vehicle production month in Tesla’s history, according to Bloomberg. The company’s deliveries represent a 26.7% gain in deliveries from last year and a drop from last quarter’s record of 310,048. 

The drop marked the lowest delivery quarter since Q3 2021 for Model 3/Y vehicles. 

The company was originally expected to deliver 295,000 vehicles, but analysts had reduced their estimates to around 256,000 over the last week, TheStreet noted. Tesla delivered 238,533 Model 3 and Model Ys for the quarter, and 16,162 Model S and Model X vehicles. 

As you can see, the company’s phase out of the Model S and Model X looks to have continued, despite a slight uptick:

The company stated: “In the second quarter, we produced over 258,000 vehicles and delivered over 254,000 vehicles, despite ongoing supply chain challenges and factory shutdowns beyond our control.”

Q2 was widely expected by Wall Street to be a miss due to the disruptions. “This has been a very tough quarter, primarily due to supply chain and production challenges in China. So we need to rally hard to recover!” CEO Elon Musk said back in mid-June. 

Morgan Stanley was out 2 weeks ago bracing for the Q2 plunge, lowering price targets on the name and saying it expected lower Q2 volumes. “We mark to market our 2Q forecasts for lower volume (latest data, China) with most of the shortfall made up for in 2H volume and higher pricing,” analyst Adam Jonas wrote last month. He also predicted the company would have a good June: 

Despite the cuts, Jonas is still encouraging “buying the dip” into what will likely be a weak Q2 print. He said that “with TSLA 2Q sales estimated to be around 100k units through May (EV-Volumes.com), we believe TSLA will flex its manufacturing prowess, aided by accelerated ramp of Austin and Berlin, and deliver ~170-175k units in June.”

Also in June we had highlighted a Wedbush note from Dan Ives said Tesla’s shutdown in China was an “epic disaster” for its June quarter. Ives said he expects to see “modest delivery softness” for the quarter. 

Ives also said he is expecting a “slower growth trajectory” in China into the second half of the year and called the headwinds out of Asia “hard to ignore”. He also commented that the ongoing Twitter drama “may be a distraction” for Musk at a time when his attention should be focused on dealing with Tesla’s issues. 

Recall, we noted weeks ago that “no vehicles were sold in Shanghai last month [April]” as a result of the lockdown, according to an auto-seller association in the city. 

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Are recession risks fully “priced in” by the markets? Such was an interesting question asked recently by my colleague Albert Edwards at Societe Generale. To wit:

“A US recession looks imminent and the discussion in the markets has moved on to how deep it will be. Forecasts for a ‘mild’ recession will now abound. But when a key Fed economic model sees an 80% chance of a hard landing, you know things are bad!

And I’ve read with increasing regularity that equities have fallen so quickly, well ahead of profits, that ‘equities have already factored in a recession.’ Another alarm bell just rang!

As noted recently, the NFIB Small Business Survey is already signaling a recession is likely. To wit:

“We again see many of the early warning signs of an economic downturn. While such doesn’t guarantee a recession, it does suggest the risks of an economic downturn are markedly higher. As noted above, in 2007, the market warned of a recession 14-months in advance of the recognition. In 2019, it was just 5-months.”

Notably, a broad range of data suggests recession risks in the U.S. are mounting. Our Economic Composite Index, which comprises more than 100 different economic data points, also warns of recession risks. The chart below compares the index to the 6-month percentage change in the Leading Economic Index.

As Mr. Edwards concludes:

“The leading indicators look grim as well. For example, the Conference Board’s leading indicator fell for the third month in a row in May and that now makes 4 declines in the last 5 months. That is normally the stuff of recession.”

The 6-month percentage change (the Conference Board says is the best predictor of recessions) is already warning of a recession. But have stocks already discounted those recession risks?

Have Stocks Priced In Recession Risks

Stocks currently remain under selling pressure due to a variety of issues causing a repricing of valuations;

• Surging inflation

• Aggressive Fed rate hikes

• Reduction, or tapering, of the Fed’s balance sheet

• Lack of stimulus support from the Government

• Rising inventories

• Weakening retail sales

• Declining real disposable incomes

• High gas and food prices weighing on consumption

As noted recently in “Earnings Recession,” as the Fed hikes rates to slow economic growth, they risk pushing the economy into a contraction. With consumers dependent on low rates to support economic growth via debt, the risk of a policy mistake remains elevated.

Since earnings remain highly correlated to economic growth, earnings don’t survive rate hikes. As the arrows show, Fed rate increases lead to earnings recessions.

Not surprisingly, our composite economic index also suggests earnings have further to fall.

Despite the year-to-date asset price decline, recession risks are unlikely to be fully accounted for.

During the previous four recessions and subsequent bear markets, the typical revision to consensus EPS estimates ranged from -6% to -18%, with a median of 10%. So far, those estimates have not fallen nearly enough.

“The problem with (current) lower P/E ratios is that while the ‘P’ has moved, the ‘E’ is on thin ice, and the cracks are starting to show.” – Albert Edwards

As he notes, while forward P/E ratios have declined, much of that is due to the decline in the “P” and not the “E.” Therefore, if an earnings recession is coming, as the data suggests, then the current “bear market” cycle still has more work to do as earnings decline.

The realignment of market prices and valuations is always a brutal process. Most likely, we are just starting the negative revision phase, which makes risk management in portfolios a key priority for now.

Investing In A Recession

Investing during a recession can be dangerous, particularly when elevated valuations are present across all asset classes. However, you can take some steps to ensure increased volatility is survivable.

• Have excess emergency savings so you are not “forced” to sell during a decline to meet obligations.

• Extend your time horizon to 5-7 years as buying distressed stocks can get more distressed.

• Don’t obsessively check your portfolio.

• Consider tax-loss harvesting (selling stocks at a loss) to offset those losses against future gains.

• Stick to your investing discipline regardless of what happens.

Once prepared, what investments do well in a recession?

“A recession is a good time to avoid speculating, especially on stocks that have taken the worst beating. Weaker companies often go bankrupt during recessions, and while stocks that have fallen by 80%, 90%, or even more might seem like bargains, they are usually cheap for a reason. Just remember – a broken business at an excellent price is still a broken business.” – Motley Fool

In other words, chasing what worked previously will likely not be the right choice. More importantly, in a slower-growing economy in the future, fundamentals will become more critical. Therefore, to make money in a recession, focus on companies that:

• Have consistent earnings growth over time.

• Are dividend-payers and avoid high leverage.

• Have free cash flow and strong operating margins.

• Avoid companies dependent on consumer spending, high cash burn rates, or negative incomes.

• Invest incrementally using lower prices to build positions.

• Lastly, don’t forget about bonds that offer a haven during volatile market environments.

While the media tries to pick the next market bottom, it is better to let the market show you. You will be late, but you will have confirmation the selling is over.

But, if I am correct, we have more work to do first.