Blessed to be President/Managing Partner/Head Cheerleader of Flag Family Media. Firm believer that anything is possible. #1percentbetter
Fargo, ND
Joined January 2015
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Steve Hallstrom retweeted
Wow. Senator John Kennedy.
How is this not everywhere.
Seriously. This is insane. Listen to what he’s actually saying.
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
.@BrianBrenberg: "August revised up by 53,000 to 186,000—a BIG number."
REMINDER: Employment gains were revised DOWN by more than 800,000 in a SINGLE YEAR under the Biden Administration.
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
If you pay attention to numbers obsessively day-to-day you can miss the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is that this might be the best--or among the best--job markets we've ever had--as measured by delivering jobs for people that want them.
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
Productive private sector added 159k jobs last month while gov't added just 6k - great to see growth coming from the real economy and not the bloated bureaucracy in Washington:
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
Manufacturing jobs jumped again in Oct to highest level since Dec '24 - as we can see on this chart, manufacturing was in a 3-yr slide before the turnaround started this year; the sector began hemorrhaging jobs at the very start of '23:
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
.@VDHanson just laid out an economic reality that completely blew my mind, and it exposes the biggest messaging failure leading up to the midterms.
While we were all fighting over the races, an economic boom was emerging right under our noses:
“165,000 new jobs were just announced and they were saying 45 a month ago. The poverty rate was at an all-time low at 10.5. The per capita family income is $87,000, a new record. The GDP was just revised at 3.4, and the Atlanta Fed said it’ll be 5 by the end of the year.
Nobody’s talking; we’re just fighting, and we are in the midst of a boom that is emerging. And I look back at 2022 when the red wave dissipated, and why did the blue wave not? So I compared the data.
The stock market, at least until yesterday, was 20,000 points higher now than when Biden stopped the red wave. And income is $14,000 higher than it was just four years ago.
So then people say, ‘It’s inflation. It’s gas.’ Well, no, it isn’t, because that was a 9.1 record inflation year in 2022. And gas on election day was somewhere between $3.95 and $4.05… It’s $4.06 today.
So what I’m getting at, the economy was a wreck. The GDP was lower, the inflation was three times higher, the gas was about the same, people were furious… what was the difference?”
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
The irony of the midterm backlash: Democrats spent years talking about rebuilding American manufacturing, yet manufacturing lost roughly 202,000-230,000 jobs in Biden’s final two years. Now foreign companies are announcing more than $900 billion in U.S. factory construction commitments under Trump, and $11.3T in new investment commitments in an industrial renaissance. That’s because of tariffs, the Trump administration says, and it needs to be monitored to see if all this materializes. But tariffs raised prices, the Fed says. Democrats can be hypocritical about manufacturing, but affordability is where incumbents get punished.
Here is the political reality: The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis estimates Trump’s tariffs added 0.2–0.4 percentage points to core PCE inflation. The NY Fed estimates they added 2.9 points to consumer-goods inflation.
And Brown University estimates the Iran war has cost Americans more than $100 billion in additional gasoline and diesel expenses—over $750 per household. For generations, voters have been unforgiving about their grocery bills and gas tanks. They walk into the voting booth asking “what are you going to do for me?” And it’s also true you cannot fill your gas tank with wind and solar, as Democrats have been undercutting US oil and gas.
You can champion reshoring, rebuild American industry and challenge China. But you cannot ask families to absorb an ever-rising cost of living and expect them not to vote accordingly. Now Democrats are in the spotlight - do you think they will really lower inflation and grocery prices and gas prices? Economists warn they have no macroeconomic plan whatsoever.
Democrats campaigned on affordability but now want to make your life more expensive with $4 trillion in tax hikes and billions more in inflationary spending on programs like Obamacare, plagued by fraud, waste and abuse. Medicare for All will cost $40T in tax hikes for less care and more government control of your health. And their affordability campaign slogan was secretly this: SUBPOENAS.
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
Q3 productivity numbers were phenomenal:
Productivity +3.6% Q/Q
Real hourly compensation +1.1% Q/Q
Unit labor costs -0.7% Q/Q
Bingo Liz, the climate crusade cannot coexist with AI development. Dems will use the AI worries to tell us fossil fuel supply is unimportant.
Wall Street analysts warn Democrats are the exact last people who should be steering America’s AI future. You cannot win the AI race while undermining U.S. energy needed to power it. America needs more electricity, more generation, an all-of-the-above energy strategy. But Democrats have America trying to power the future with one hand tied behind its back. That’s like entering a Formula One race and deliberately draining the gas tank.
China is gaining an advantage in the AI race because it treats electricity as a strategic national asset, while the United States is struggling to build enough power infrastructure to keep up.
China is building electricity capacity at a staggering pace with an all of the above energy approach. The Federal Reserve reported that China added 429 gigawatts of net generation capacity in 2024 alone—more than 15 times the U.S.
China is expanding solar, wind, hydro, nuclear and coal. China has a much larger electricity supply. It generates more than twice as much electricity as the United States.
Democrats are the bottleneck. Energy is a national security issue. China understands that the AI race is also an energy race. American Democrats are still fighting over which forms of energy we're allowed to produce. You cannot lead the AI revolution while restricting the energy needed to power it.
You can't win the race for the technology of the future by sabotaging the energy that makes that future possible.
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
We have our answer . . The correction continues. Perhaps a blessing, if we can’t have a new rally, then let’s hurry this market selloff and get to the capitulation and despair stage. Caution - we will likely get some false rallies before the bottom.
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
🚨 NEW: Fox’s @BretBaier issues WARNING after Democrats win midterms: “Be ready for big tax bills that change the entire direction Congress has been going.”
@hughhewitt: “I hope they do medicare for all, that they try it. When Democrats messed with ‘Hillarycare’ in 1993 and 1994, they got blown out in 1994 in a landslide blowout. When they did ‘Obamacare’ in 2009/2010, they got blown out in 2010.”
“It’s easy to spend money, bend gavels, but can they legislate? They’ll get vetoed on tax hikes if they try medicare for all. They will be revealed again as another assault on American healthcare and they will be tossed out again.”
Agree, back up the truck. Just not sure the bloodletting is over quite yet. Probably a bounce tomorrow....at these levels though, I wouldn't be too picky, I'd just buy. These are elite tech companies. They're not going anywhere.
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
Not solely, but the main driver per multiple reports. Wednesday’s post-election bounce faded Thursday as markets priced in Democratic gains, especially Texas Gov-elect Hinojosa’s pledged data-center moratorium. Texas holds ~25% of planned U.S. capacity; analysts flagged 30-45% of near-term buildout at risk. That hit semiconductors hardest (SOXX -12%, AMD/MU/MRVL -17%, NVDA -9%) while Mag7 shed $1T. Pre-existing AI valuation and earnings worries amplified it, unlike the milder 2018 gridlock reaction.
Question for you @grok?
Today was much worse than any of those days. Is it just the Democrat threat to AI development/spending?
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
After the 2018 midterms (Dems took House, GOP kept Senate):
Nov 7: S&P +2.1%, Dow +2.1%, Nasdaq +2.6% (relief on gridlock).
Nov 8: S&P -0.3%, Dow flat, Nasdaq -0.5%.
Nov 9: S&P -0.9%, Dow -0.8%, Nasdaq -1.6% (oil/China concerns).
Net from election close: S&P about +0.9%.
Hey @grok what happened in the first 3 trading days after the 2018 midterms, the last time Trump went through these kinds of congressional losses?
True ~6% Nasdaq single-day drops are rare (under 25 since 1971). The closest recent ones (Apr 3-4 2025, ~5.8-6%) saw a sharp rebound: losses erased in weeks and the index surged over 50% from the April low by year-end.
Older cases vary: 2011 (-6.9%) jumped 5.3% next day then chopped; 2020/2008 crisis drops often saw more selling first before strong multi-month rallies. Average post-correction gains have been ~9% in 3 months.
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
Midterms came down to economic messaging. @carney says “We're having an economic boom… Republicans couldn't sell it, this is a serious failure on their part.”
Steve Hallstrom retweeted
Let me get this straight.
Jobless claims just fell to 189,000, the lowest level since 1969. You have to go back 57 years to find a better number. We're now filing fewer unemployment claims in a normal week than we did in the single best week of 2019, before the pandemic.
The four-week average is down more than 13% from a year ago. People are working. The firing has basically stopped.
And groceries? Food inflation is running at 1.8%, below the 20-year average of 2.6%. Your grocery bill is climbing slower than it normally does.
So the labor market is the strongest in half a century and food is calmer than the 20-year norm.
And on Tuesday, voters turned around and punished the party in charge over the economy.
It's odd. You can put up the best jobs numbers since 1969 and still lose the room.