If we were to accurately describe the economy right now, it would be weak – but not getting weaker. I believe that is the product of the “dollar”, or lack of further “dollar” intrusion. Combined with the usual seasonal changes earlier in the year, the nervous calm of the past almost eight months has had a limited but nonetheless soothing [...]
A strong cohort of global PMI’s has cheered today pretty much everyone, from economists to the media and anyone else in between. China’s official Manufacturing PMI was calculated at 51.2 in October, the highest level since July 2014, up seemingly significantly from the 49.9 just three months ago this July. In the United States, the ISM Manufacturing rose again to [...]
For many, it was just too good. In early 2013, gold prices were slammed – twice. Just after QE3 was announced, gold had moved back up to almost $1,800 per ounce as it “should” have, reflecting all that future “money printing.” Rather than keep going, however, gold started to drop and then drop some more so that by the time [...]
The ultimate lesson for learning not to rely on one quarter of GDP growth was actually two quarters. In the middle of 2014, GDP posted back-to-back gains that at the time seemed nothing less than fantastic. Even with residual seasonality revisions and new benchmarks, those two quarters remain prominent landmarks in an otherwise bleak landscape. And that is the whole [...]
Last year, the usual rebound in GDP was flipped. Q1’s are, or were before “residual seasonality”, the low mark followed by some surge at some point. In 2015, it was Q2 that originally jumped, hitting almost 4% in the original estimates. What followed in Q3 was frustration, as GDP was first figured to be only 1.5%. It was disappointing but [...]
Durable goods continue to show that there is no difference between the economy of 2015 and the one being described by these numbers in 2016. To the “transitory” narrative, it is the death blow, which is why so many central banks and central bankers are busy exploring other options (while as quietly as they can writing down the future economy). [...]
Revenue at IBM fell just barely in Q3 2016, perhaps something of an achievement for beleaguered Big Blue. The company has seen its revenue shrink for an astonishing 18 quarters in a row. During that time, IBM has been written off as no longer important, where once a bellwether for the industry and even the whole global economy now supposedly [...]
Industrial production fell another 1% in September year-over-year, the 13th consecutive contraction. With that, though the slope of the decline remains unusually shallow like almost every other economic account related to manufacturing and production, the contractions are now lapping. The index level for industrial production in September 2016 is 1.3% less than the level from September 2014; the relevant part [...]
The JOLTS series is, in my view, a second tier data set made so by its computational connections to the CES. The Job Openings portion I believe has proven over the past few years why it is less reliable, surging so far out of character that it is all alone in suggesting huge economic positivity that even the main BLS [...]
Four years ago, recession fatigue had set in as by then it was already several years into recovery even though it just didn’t seem that way. Historical experience had been uniform in business cycle symmetry; the economy comes back with same intensity and pace by which it had been knocked down. From that expectation alone the economy of 2012 should [...]
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