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Proprietary global macroeconomic and capital markets research highlights from AWAIM's Investment Committee, curated by Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Ivan Illán. Perspectives shared here are Investment Committee considerations for portfolio management decisions and other related risk management activities.

Sunday, April 26, 2026

The accompanying chart overlays the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (Purple) against the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (Blue). As of April 2026, a definitive performance gap persists year-to-date. Notably, this divergence...

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

The accompanying chart overlays the S&P 500 Level (Purple) against the 10-2 Year Treasury Yield Spread (Orange). This spread, a critical gauge of economic health, has recently moved from a deep, multi-year inversion back...

Sunday, February 1, 2026

Our analysis of the copper/gold ratio alongside changes in the 10-year Treasury yield reveals a compelling, historically indicative pattern for major economic inflection points. Notably, both series peaked in tandem in early 2020...

Sunday, January 11, 2026

The S&P 500’s continued ascent to record levels has been accompanied by a significant and parallel rise in investor margin debt, according to recent FINRA data. This relationship, visible in the attached chart, shows a historically...

Monday, November 10, 2025

If you’ve been reading financial news lately, you’ve probably seen headlines fretting about stock market valuations being “lofty,” “extended,” or in a “bubble.” A lot of that chatter is fueled by a metric known as the Shiller CAPE...

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Thursday, October 9, 2025

Recent economic data presents a stark contrast between the world's two largest economies. Over the past three years, the United States and China have experienced divergent consumer price index (CPI) trajectories, highlighting their...

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Key Observation: A historical analysis of the Effective Federal Funds Rate (FFR) and the 10-Year Treasury Yield reveals a consistent and dramatic pattern: the Federal Reserve enacts rapid and significant cuts to the FFR at the onset of...

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Research Highlight: The Link Between Rising Unemployment Claims and Declining Labor Force Participation Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Department of Labor (DoL) reveals a concerning trend in the U.S....

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Over the years, I've written about money supply and money velocity and their importance on indicating the condition and direction of the U.S. economy. Theses metrics illustrate a fundamental aspect of an economy's "plumbing". To me,...

Friday, June 6, 2025

Historically, there's been a high correlation between U.S. Treasury Yields (10-year bonds) and the value of the U.S. Dollar. The accompanying chart to this research highlight shows the relationship from September 2022 through June 2025...

Friday, May 2, 2025

You read that correctly. The cost for high-quality, investment grade debt has increased more than 132% in a little over three years. Meanwhile, costs to lower quality, junk rated debt have only increased 64% over the same period. If...

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

There's been a fair amount of discussion regarding the recently demonstrated weakness in the US Dollar (USD). But like many financial metrics, taking a broader perspective is always more helpful. Over the past decade, the USD has...

Friday, March 7, 2025

Referencing alternative measures of labor utilization provides great insights on an evolving economic landscape. Instead of taking the popular "Unemployment Rate" (which is the official U.S. unemployment rate) as the quintessential...

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

As of the end of Q4'2024, we've noticed that Private Fixed Investment (PFI) has made a divergence from Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE). In our accompanying prepared graph (which illustrates "real" or "net of inflation" figures),...

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Aligne Wealth Advisors Investment Management (AWAIM®) is pleased to announce the recognition of its founder and Chief Investment Officer, Ivan Illan, in a research paper presented at the prestigious American Finance Association (AFA)...

Sunday, January 5, 2025

There's a popular (and erroneous) assumption that lowering of the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) somehow simultaneously reduces broader market rates. This is not true, especially as it pertains to intermediate- to long-dated paper, as...

Thursday, November 28, 2024

Aligne Wealth Advisors Investment Management (AWAIM®) today announced its economic research was cited by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in a report for Members and Committees of Congress. This recognition highlights AWAIM's...

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

There is very little perception of broad economic risk on a forward-looking basis, as indicated by Option-Adjusted Spreads (OAS) on the U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond market. As the accompanying chart illustrates, recent OAS metrics...

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

There's been a significant increase in the charge-off rate on credit card loans across all U.S. banks, since January 2022. This makes sense, given the overall increase in the amount of revolving debt outstanding (see Chart below, "US...

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

The two (2) charts seen here contain data comparing U.S. Public Debt Per Capita and U.S. Real Disposable Income Per Capita across two different time periods September 1975 through August 1980 and September 2019 through July 2024.

Thursday, August 8, 2024

Chart contains data referenced in our CIO's August 2024 article for Forbes.

Wednesday, August 7, 2024

As discussed in detail last summer (see Research Highlights and Forbes article), comparing the Earnings Yield on stocks (using the S&P 500 Cyclically Adjusted Earnings Yield [CAEY]) to the Risk-Free Yields on U.S. Treasury Bonds can...

Thursday, July 4, 2024

High yield bond prices have been conveying that there's nothing to worry about, while small caps (which are mostly below investment grade) say the opposite.

Friday, June 7, 2024

As of 2023, there were 131,430,000 U.S. households. The Top 1% (based on share of wealth, representing 1,318,364 households) own 30.3% of all assets. According to the Federal Reserve, this equates to $35.6 Trillion.

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

For the accompanying narrative of the data presented in this chart, please visit our CIO's article in Forbes ("Why Short-Term Rates Are Due For A Major Mean Reversion", Published May 22, 2024) at: https://www.forbes...

Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Information Tech Represents 5% of U.S. GDP, But 30% of U.S. Stock Market You read that correctly. The Information Tech sector contributes just 5.4% (as of Q3'2023) as a percentage of U.S. GDP, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of...

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

In the past couple of months, there has been newly published economic data illustrating just how challenging maintaining a balanced household budget has become. Credit card debt has ballooned to more than $1.129 Trillion, while the...

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

In my next article for Forbes tentatively titled, "Hoping For A Bad Recession To Fix Inflation Is Unfortunately Necessary", I write about one economic metric that's flashing yellow - the Output Gap. Figure 1 illustrates just how...

Saturday, January 6, 2024

In an upcoming Forbes article tentatively entitled, "It's Normal That The Stock Market and Economy Are On Different Pages", I share a study on the relationships between U.S. GDP, M2 Money Supply, S&P 500, and DJIA across four distinct...

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

If market participants seem to be overly obsessed with the direction of the Federal Funds Rate (FFR), then we should dedicate a research highlight to its level over the past two decades.

Thursday, November 2, 2023

As the US economy continues to adjust to higher interest rates, a review of prior periods of aggressive Federal Reserve rate hiking cycles is necessary. The accompanying charts detail the historical records for the Effective Federal...

Monday, October 2, 2023

When thinking about the implications of a flat-to-inverse yield curve for an economy, you don't need a doctorate in applied mathematics or economics to understand that it's not supportive of properly functioning capital markets....

Friday, September 1, 2023

If you're looking for signs of economic cooling, the activity level of purchasing managers in the manufacturing sector is now 15.90% lower than before the pandemic (as of August 31, 2023). The accompanying chart shows the significant...

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

It's challenging to get a clear view on the directionality of corporate financials. This is due to many factors, but one in particular is the obscurity of non-operating expenses. Unlike other expense categories for businesses,...

Monday, July 10, 2023

In my podcast dated June 9, 2023 entitled "Bad Breadth", the phenomenon illustrated in the accompanying chart was discussed. This market dynamic has continued since then. The chart reveals the divergence in performance began somewhere...

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

The concept of Equity Risk Premium (ERP) could be viewed through the lens of two marketplace components - a risk-free rate and the market's earnings yield (see chart). Prior to the Great Financial Crisis ('08-'09) the risk-free rate...

Monday, May 15, 2023

Corporate wellness programs have been key tools in improving productivity, employee retention, and creating a more desirable corporate culture. While many companies have put a strong focus on physical wellness plans, many are just...

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

Over the past five years, note the high correlation between the US stock market and M2 money supply. This correlation works both to the upside and downside. As the Federal Reserve continues its contractionary monetary policy stance, we expe

Sunday, May 7, 2023

The world is facing an unprecedented economic challenge as the inflation rate continues to rise. People are trying to understand why their wallets are feeling lighter, and they are looking for someone to blame. Unfortunately, corporations..

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

As you make gifts of your business interest, you might also be giving up some of your ownership control over the business, while the recipient of the gift gains control. If you have co-owners, your relative percentage of control will dimini

Thursday, April 27, 2023

In my Forbes article from November 2022 entitled, “The Unexpected Gift of Currency Devaluation”, I shared our firm’s view that the US Dollar faces headwinds that other currencies do not. Since that time, the US Dollar has weakened by...

Monday, April 24, 2023

Retirement is a significant milestone in one's life, which requires careful planning and foresight to pursue a confident and stress-free transition. One effective way to plan for retirement is by adopting the Retirement Bucket Strategy.

Monday, April 10, 2023

Investing can be a tricky business, even for seasoned professionals. With a plethora of investment options available and constantly changing market trends, it can be difficult to make informed investment decisions.

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Currently, the yield on BBB corporates is 24% HIGHER than average, since Mar'05. Meanwhile, these same bonds exhibit a 30% LOWER than average OAS/Yield ratio. This may suggest that risk-reward in this area is abysmal.

Thursday, March 23, 2023

Quantitative tightening reversal (see chart)… Almost half the tightening since its inception last year has been undone in the past two weeks. Hopefully, this is a brief policy blip. Regardless, we do not view this as a positive...

Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Personal household savings have declined from over $4.8 Trillion in Q2’2020 to less than $800 Billion. Meanwhile, high interest rate credit card debt has grown from around $800 Billion to nearly $1 Trillion, over the same period...

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Revenge spending post-pandemic continues to be an impactful force within the U.S. economy. Not only have we seen household consumer debt top $4.7Trillion by the end of Q3’2022 (an all-time high), but the personal saving rate has continued t

Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Far from wow, most job growth over the past year has been in part-time employment. This has been a recessionary sign in previous economic cycles incl. 1981, 1990, & 2008.

Friday, January 13, 2023

The 10-Year US Treasury Yield has risen 116% over the past year, while the Fed (the "buyer of last resort") has reduced its assets by only 3%.

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

A decade-plus downtrend in M1 money velocity could be attributable to the dramatic historical deviation of monetary base vs. currency in circulation, began in the Great Financial Crisis (Oct'08) and has accelerated since. In short,...

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Over the past five years U.S. exports of services (which is the largest segment of the U.S. economy) have increased a little over 12%, while imports of services have increased by nearly 21%. This is in part due to the growing trend of...

Monday, September 19, 2022

Over the past decade, home prices have increased at an annualized rate of nearly 9% per year, while incomes have increased by almost 4% per year. This has resulted in home prices that are now 4.5X more than US median family income. Ten...

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

If you think all developed economy stock markets have been losing value this year, you’d be wrong. Year-to-date (as of September 5, 2022), the MSCI United Kingdom index level has gained 0.77% in local currency terms (e.g.,...

Thursday, August 25, 2022

There’s an unusual divergence between US GDI (gross domestic income) and US GDP (gross domestic product). Typically, these two metrics track very closely, as an economy’s participants earn wages, profits, and taxes from the...

Monday, August 15, 2022

U.S. households have been far more conservative in their debt accumulation relative to the government and corporations, rising just 43% from a decade ago (or 3.72% annualized). Compare this to U.S. public debt per capita which has...

Monday, August 8, 2022

With U.S. corporate debt at its highest level ever and yields on investment grade corporate debt at levels more than twice that of two years ago, CFOs may find it more challenging to navigate refinance and/or debt payoff options, as a...

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

If Friday’s PCE figure is at $17T or higher I’d expect The Fed to aggressively pursue its more restrictive monetary policy well into the Fall. Getting prices under control is all about bringing “demand into better...

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Yield on B-rated is 287bps above its 5-Year average, while OAS is 141bps above. Finally beginning to see some good old-fashioned increased credit risk perception coming back to this market but would expect to see more as FOMC activity level