The earnings quarterly reporting of publicly-listed companies puts enormous pressure on them to deliver continuously better results. Investors and analysts look at these figures very closely in expectation of continued growth. This pressure may lead to creative accounting practices called “earnings management”. As we know, these practices can escalate into earnings manipulation, as in the infamous Enron and Bernie Madoff accounting scandals. In this article, I will look at a metric that assesses the likelihood of a company manipulating its earnings and apply it to the Russell 3000 Index.

“Recession” seems to be one of the most debated topics since mid-2022. As the economic slowdown concerns were gradually easing at the start of the year, last month’s global banking crisis helped refuel those fears again. While the recession doesn’t come, it might be prudent to get ready for it. And what happens when we enter a recession? Bankruptcies… In this article, I will look at a measure that assesses the probability that a firm will file for bankruptcy and apply it to the Russell 3000 Index.

There is a mantra in the investment community that goes by “Don’t Fight the Fed”. It suggests that investors should align their decisions with those taken by the Fed, and more specifically the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), regarding reference rates. At the moment we are experiencing the fastest Fed Rate Hiking Cycle ever, as described in the previous article, and the S&P 500 Index is close to 15% below its early 2022 all-time high it seems prudent to live by this mantra.

Happy Fed Week! After the tumultuous last two weeks, which saw the most severe bank failures since the Global Financial Crisis, this week we will have a highly anticipated FOMC meeting with an anxiously expected Fed Interest rate decision due on Wednesday. Considering the current Fed rate hike path and inflation dynamics, I decided to write this article to look through the previous Fed rate hike cycles. The Highest Inflation Rate in the Last 40 Years Let’s start with analyzing the historical values for the Fed reference rate and inflation.

Covid-19 and the urge to lockdown countries had a sudden economic impact never seen before. Some mentioned that the pandemic’s impact was sort of a combined impact of the Spanish Flu and the Great Depression together, and at the same time. On the other hand, there was a major difference when it comes to the economic impact, in that the Governmental and Central Banks’ response was much faster now than it was during the Great Depression.

The Yield Curve Flattening, Yield Curve Inversion, Yield Curve Control, Yield Curve Manipulation… Reference interest rates are good instruments for monetary policy and give us some insight on the state of an economy. However, the Yield Curve is a much more powerful tool to visualize the current state and future expectations about the economy’s growth direction, at a given time. Further to that, during the last years, especially due to the challenge on managing low interest rates by central banks, the Yield Curve has been granted additional importance.

Inequality Matters! The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is one decade past now, but now we are embracing a new challenging economic outlook due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Oppositely to what happened during the GFC, we saw now a fast response from Governments (Fiscal Policy) and Central Banks (Monetary Policy) around the world. The outcome of this effort is still to be seen as we are just in the middle of this new crisis.

Can Money Buy Happiness? Everybody is searching for happiness! Many people say that money doesn’t buy happiness, but perhaps what money can do is to allow a path for happiness. Anyway, this blog as the reader knows is not about Philosophy. Here we are discussing economics and looking at interesting data. So let’s see how Money and Happiness can be unfold in this world of Vasconomics. Wealth In a previous article when referring to Wealth, I presented the metric GDP per Capita PPP.

When meeting people from different countries, they would sometimes ask me what the biggest industries in Portugal and what are Portugal’s most known products. Then, a straightforward answer for the most recent years is “Tourism” since it has been broadly increasing in the last decade. However, I could still remember the prominence of the textile industry in the north, more specifically, the shoemaking industry in Guimarães. On top of that, there are the stories of Olive Oil and Cork industry – since Portugal is the biggest producer/exporter of cork in the world.

In this article I intend to explain the concepts of Nominal Interest rate, Inflation and Real Interest rate. I believe that the general public knows the first two concepts, however, I am not so sure about the third one. Therefore, the final goal is to understand this last concept by having a thorough view of all the concepts and observe their representation. “Whatever it takes” In 2012, the Eurozone was financially falling apart, getting deeper into its infamous “Eurozone debt crisis” after the bailouts of Ireland, Greece and Portugal, alongside multiple banks’ bailing out domestically.

I hope you enjoyed my previous article about the relationship between Economic Wealth and Climate. In this article, I intend to talk about a related but different concept: Human Development! The reader may think that the richest (wealthiest) countries are ALWAYS the most developed. Despite a strong relationship between the two concepts, these are different. How to measure a Country’s Human Development? To explain Human Development, I will focus on an indicator developed and compiled by the United Nations: the Human Development Index.

When in university in the early 2010’s in Portugal, me and my colleagues would discuss whether all the richest countries had to be the ones with the worse weather. The worse weather for us represented cold temperatures and this vision made sense for us based on a Southern European country and glancing at Northern counterparts, such as Germany or Norway. However, we always kept one country in our mind: Australia!