Jobless Claims Apparently Go Both Ways
From the Department of Labor, announcing a 5-year low in adjusted jobless claims: “The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 436,766 in the week ending January 19, a decrease of 119,944 from the previous week. There were 416,880 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.” [emphasis added] According to .. read more
Expectations
JP Morgan reported their widely anticipated earnings Friday and the losses from the London Whale trading fiasco were huge. The firm had initially pegged the losses at $1 to 2 billion but the quarterly report showed the total has bulged to $5.8 billion. And according to the CFO there may be additional losses of $700 .. read more
Weekly Economic & Market Review
Alright, now I’m starting to get worried. No, not about the late Friday S&P downgrade of France, Austria and a host of lesser European countries’ sovereign debt. That was merely an acknowledgement of something that was obvious to any sentient being long before Friday. How in the world could France retain its AAA rating while .. read more
Weekly Economic & Market Review
Last week’s data continued the recent trend of better than expected reports on the US economy. Unfortunately, the investing world chose to focus on the latest blip in Italian and Spanish bond yields and equity markets turned in their worst week since September. The S&P 500 fell 3.81% on the week, while Europe and Emerging .. read more
Weekly Economic & Market Review
What would you think if you surfed over to the home page of the Wall Street Journal tomorrow and saw this headline: Malaysian Recession Threatens US Economic Expansion How about this one? Oman Facing Depression – World Economy At Risk Or this one? Ghana Prime Minister Resigns, US Investors Await Formation of New Government Or .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
The deal to raise the debt ceiling, agreed to last week, obviously wasn’t enough to calm markets and no wonder. The deal was just more of the same smoke and mirrors we’ve come to expect from the small, petty people who populate the halls of power in Washington, D.C. Finding anything in this deal that .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
Stocks were up last week based mostly on the idea that Europe and the US were finally addressing their debt issues but anyone placing buy orders based on that are likely to be disappointed. Europe approved a new loan package for Greece that in my opinion makes further contagion more likely rather than less. The .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
Volatility made a comeback last week as traders alternately bought and sold based on the latest utterances of various government officials. First it was Bernanke’s semi-annual report to Congress where his initial remarks were taken as an indication that QE 3 was warming up in the wings. Apparently not happy with how the market interpreted .. read more
