The Euro crisis and worsening economic statistics back home have knocked the wind out of the sails for the US stock market. It’s been quite a bull run since the November lows, but now the S&P 500 has corrected and finds itself under its 50-day moving average and its short-term uptrend line. The index made a lower high at 1415 [...]
Thinking Things Over May 6, 2012 Volume II, Number 18: The Facebook Phenomenon and Its Economic Impact By John L. Chapman, Ph.D. Canton, Ohio. Facebook, Inc. begins its investor roadshow this week in anticipation of an initial public offering on May 18. The company's potential is virtually unlimited, though business history is replete with should-have would-have could-have stories. Regardless of its fate [...]
By John L. Chapman, Ph.D. Canton, Ohio. May 5, 2012 The U.S. economy added 115,000 non-farm payroll jobs in April, and the unemployment rate fell to 8.1%. We analyze what this means ahead of important weekend elections in Europe. The Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics released its April jobs report Friday morning. Here are summary highlights: (1) Non-farm payrolls [...]
In early January 2011, the ISM announced its non-factory index, which covers approximately 90% of the economy, had increased in December 2010 to a high not seen since May 2006. The implication for that comparison was that the recovery was firmly entrenched and the high times of an economic boom had finally and belatedly returned. This was smack in the [...]
One graph tells the story: Think about that for just a minute. Unemployment is over 8% and yet unit labor costs are almost back to their all time high. If the goal is to reduce unemployment the obvious way to do that is to reduce the cost of employment. For whatever reason, that isn't happening. Why not? What this [...]
Remember all that talk about 10 days ago about how earnings were coming in so much better than expected? Yeah, not so much. From Bespoke: Over the first ten days of earnings season, the percentage of companies beating earnings estimates remained above 70%, which would have been one of the highest readings seen over the last ten years. Over the [...]
Monetary adjustments, heavy as they have been in these past four years, will remain a permanent part of our economic landscape so long as central banks remain committed to their current course. Now that the annual excitation of economists and their dreams of recovery are waning, and the “unexpected” decline in the economy has returned right on schedule, the discussion [...]
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