Dec 4
Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country was ready for war with Europe if attacked.
Europe will not attack Russia.
But Russia using Hitler’s game plan will escalate its asymmetrical war against free Europe.
Putin accused the continent’s leaders of trying to sabotage the peace negotiations, calling recent proposed changes to a U.S. peace plan for Ukraine “absolutely unacceptable.” The remarks, which came before Putin met White House special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow, represented some of his most pointed criticism of Europe as he seeks to fuel divisions in NATO. A senior NATO official said that members are united and that Russia doesn’t have the troop numbers or military capability to defeat the bloc in Europe. See the Journal.
I would aggressively buy European defense stocks.
Republicans held onto a Congressional House seat in Tennessee. But Democrats gave Republicans a scare. Still off year and special elections are not a good indicator of national voting intentions.
Congressional leadership is corrupt. See below under Economics.
In the future, more Americans will die from cancer and other diseases because of price controls on prescription pharmaceuticals.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bidens-ira-is-harming-cancer-patients-83708773
Markets and Stocks
A strong economy, robust earnings and an accommodative Fed are foundations for a bull market. I expect GDP growth in 2H 2025 to be around 3%.
Retail sales are strong.
Same-store retail sales surged by 7.6% YoY for the week ending Nov 29, the most since December 2022. via @KoyfinCharts
Wage growth is consistent with inflation around 2.5%. Wages and prices will converge.
BUT, ADP the payroll company, says private sector payrolls declined by 32,000 in November as small business shed workers.
The U.S. labor market slowdown intensified in November as private companies cut 32,000 workers, with small businesses hit the hardest, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday.
Larger businesses, entailing companies with 50 or more employees, actually reported a net gain of 90,000 workers. However, establishments with fewer than 50 saw a decline of 120,000.See CNBC.
The takeaway, the Fed will cut next week.
Paul Meeks , who was a top analyst during the internet era, is a portfolio manager and a regular contributor to CNBC. Yesterday, speaking on CNBC, he reiterated his very positive outlook for the AI stack including Nvidia and TSMC.
Anthropic and OpenAI are in a race to go public. Capital investment in AI will remain strong.
Nvidia
Morgan Stanley’s semiconductor analyst said Nvidia still has a clear lead in AI chips, even as more rivals, including hyperscalers like Alphabet enter the space. Some investors now expect rivals to catch up quickly, but Moore pushed back, calling those worries “overstated.” He said recent supply chain checks show no evidence that Nvidia is losing share.
The analyst believes Nvidia continues to offer the best cost and performance setup for AI workloads, which remains the main reason customers choose the platform. Based on feedback from industry contacts, Moore expects Nvidia’s advantage to continue through the next major product cycle.
Moore also highlighted that AI demand across the ecosystem remains strong. High-bandwidth memory, advanced packaging, and GPU supply are all running tight, and demand is still rising faster than expected. He said this reinforces Nvidia’s role as the key supplier in the AI build-out and shows that customers view the company as essential to scaling AI models.
Bank of America reiterates its very positive outlook for ASML.
I agree with Wells Fargo, Oracle will rebound.
Boeing and Airbus SE, symbol, EADSY, are both great long term investments.
Like gold, silver’s rally this year has been nothing short of astonishing.
The metal has doubled in 2025 and hit a record high on Wednesday. Supply deficits, a weaker dollar and concern over the state of the economy have pushed the metal to all-time highs. Silver got its latest boost after ADP reported a surprise decline in private payrolls for November.
“Silver has gone parabolic,” warned Jonathan Krinsky, chief markets technician at BTIG, in a note to clients.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/03/the-trade-in-silver-has-gone-parabolic-can-it-last.html
Economics
U.S. productivity growth is understated.
Analysts examine the recent slow growth in manufacturing productivity.
We show that nearly all measured TFP growth since 1987—and its post-2000s decline—comes from a few computer-related industries.
We argue conventional measures understate manufacturing productivity growth by failing to fully capture quality improvements.
We compare consumer to producer and import price indices. In rapidly changing industries, consumer price indices indicate less inflation, suggesting mismeasurement in standard industry deflators.
Using an input-output framework, we estimate that TFP growth is understated by 1.7 percentage points in durable manufacturing and 0.4 percentage points in nondurable manufacturing, with no mismeasurement in nonmanufacturing industries.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w34264
Politics
Republicans averted an upset in a Tennessee-based US House race, with Matt Van Epps, the Trump-backed Republican candidate, projected to win.
Van Epps led by about a nine-point margin with more than 95% of the vote counted, despite Trump winning the district in 2024 by roughly 22 percentage points.
The result indicates that the Democrats’ central economic message has some resonance across the political spectrum, as Democrat Aftyn Behn campaigned on the issue of affordability and performed better than expected in a typically solid red seat.
Congressional leadership are uncannily good stock pickers.
Using transaction-level data on US congressional stock trades, we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension. Leaders’ superior performance arises through two mechanisms.
The political influence channel is reflected in higher returns when their party controls the chamber, sales of stocks preceding regulatory actions, and purchase of stocks whose firms receiving more government contracts and favorable party support on bills.
The corporate access channel is reflected in stock trades that predict subsequent corporate news and greater returns on donor-owned or home-state firms.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w34524
Sociology
Fanatics announced Wednesday that its prediction market, Fanatics Markets, will launch this week in 24 states.
The prediction market will launch in two phases, including event contracts ranging from sports and finance to tech and music.
Gambling is now a national addiction. This is unfortunate.
BUT LIBERTY IS THE FOUNDATION OF THE COUNTRY.