Weekly Economic and Market Review
Anticipation of the rapture must have gripped Wall Street traders last week. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the first day trading of LinkedIn. If the world had ended Saturday as expected, surely it wouldn’t matter that Thursday you paid 35 times sales for a company that expects to post a .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
I’m not sure what possessed investors to re-embrace the warmth of the bull market last week but it surely wasn’t good news on the US economy. Or good news from Japan. Or good news from the Middle East. Or good news from Europe. Or good news on the housing market. The ability to ignore the .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
The economic reports released in the Christmas week continued the recent trend of stronger data. In particular, consumers have been leading the way as shown by several reports last week. The Goldman and Redbook weekly retail reports both showed strength going into the holiday with the year over year change now in the range of .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
See if you can guess what economy produced the following year over year changes: GDP growth rate +56% Personal Income +4.35% Savings Rate +23.91% Fixed Investment +5.37% Steel Output +10.32% Business Sales +8.86% Durable Goods Sales +12.2% Factory Shipments +7.21% Retail Store Sales +7.31% Factory Orders +17.18% Exports +12.58% You wouldn’t know it from all .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
It’s not exactly the Newsweek indicator but anyone with contrarian instincts had to note the cover story of Barron’s this weekend, Bears Beware!, with at least a modicum of concern. The story concerns the magazine’s recent Big Money Poll survey of money managers who it turns out are – surprise! – bullish on stocks. I’m .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
If the goal of Ben Bernanke’s Jackson Hole speech and the recent FOMC statement was to weaken the dollar, well mission accomplished. Since Bernanke laid out the Fed’s options for creating more inflation on August 27th, the US dollar index has dropped 5% and all manner of risky assets have moved higher when measured in .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
Has sentiment reached an extreme? Is anyone surprised anymore when weak economic data is released? Were you surprised that existing home sales fell 27% last month? I wasn’t and apparently neither were the people buying up home builder stocks when that news was released last Tuesday. Were you surprised to read the Goldman and Redbook .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
Some not as bad as expected news on the real estate markets, some pretty damn good earnings, a Bernanke assurance that he remains vigilant at the controls of the printing press and the release of the results of the European bank stress tests were enough to move the US stock market higher by 3.5% last .. read more
