Unless a rock has subsumed you, you’re aware of the battle between President Trump and the Federal Reserve. Does President Trump have a point? Is the Fed an independent observer or does the institution have a political agenda? Q3 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc These two questions are, of course, [...]
Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) released an opinion piece titled “Growth Is on the Ballot”. The WSJ Editorial Board began the article with this quote from Lawrence Summer, former advisor to President Obama: Q3 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc “If [Donald Trump] were elected, I would expect a [...]
Hotly debated among demographers today is the happiness of the younger generation. Some analysts point to lower income. Others point to the decline of marriage. Others point to the harmful effects of constant technology use, such as phone games or abuse of video game consoles. Still others point to [...]
Housing took center stage this past week. Housing starts, new and existing home sales, and Case-Shiller home prices gave us an idea of what the American housing market looks like. [REITs] Q2 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc Question: If you had to guess what stage of the business cycle the housing [...]
Fed Political Bias? Friday's job report was a stinker. The +38K jobs was much lower than the 160K the market expected and the lowest month-over-month figure we've seen since September 2010. Although next month's labor market report is likely to bounce back up, the underlying drift in hiring is slowing, as [...]
Economic Recovery The Conference Board's Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) came in at 123.9. April's reading, while quite strong, is still below the prior expansion's peak of 126.0 in March 2006. What does this imply for the incursion of the next recession? Here is a look. Also see Which President Wins? Looking at [...]
Fed Started Hiking - On December 15, 2015, the Fed shocked the world. It announced that it would start raising rates for the first time since 2006. The politically motivated tightening move may come one more time before the election. Perhaps in June. Also see Which President Wins? Looking at [...]
Determine Election Outcome ? Research on what determines the outcome of elections is wide and deep, ranging from whether a war is going on, to GDP growth, to social issues, and a host of others. This year, perhaps more so than any other, the market could determine the outcome of the [...]
Today's BLS Report was quite unattractive. Month-over-month job growth came in at 160K, well below the 207K the market expected. Wages are stuck in low gear and are a host of other labor market indicators. Also see Which President Wins? Looking at Some Politics Connected with Today’s American Labor Market BLS Report The [...]
Government Spending needed for growth? First, an Overview of What We Saw Recently Also see Which President Wins? Looking at Some Politics Connected with Today’s American Labor Market Before addressing the topic of govt spending and the performance of the economy and equity markets, a brief review of recent GDP figures seems in order. GDP [...]
Does Anyone See Sadness in Recent Housing Figures? Garnering much less attention than last week’s GDP report were the housing figures. In particular, we received figures on homeownership, vacancies, housing stock, and a host of other relevant indications on the state of the American housing market. Perhaps the saddest figure of the [...]
American Consumer RIP Economic indicators are noisy, meaning that there’s a lot of movement from month to month. There’s so much noisiness in economic indicators that it causes some market participants to downplay high frequency figures. Also see Which President Wins? Looking at Some Politics Connected with Today’s American Labor Market Yesterday's big [...]
Given that the American labor market is by far the most important topic on the minds of voters, today’s labor market report provides an opportunity to review how presidents (and their sometimes begrudgingly connected political parties) look across 2 hotly discussed labor market topics. Also see Do American Workers Have Anything [...]
Do American Workers Have Anything To Complain About? Also see Personal incoming and spending by President Aptly summed, the American labor market is fine. The baseline forecast suggests the remainder of 2016 will see moderate opportunity for workers to gain employment. Here are 9 charts summing up the state of American labor. American [...]
The recent Personal Income and Personal Spending figures provided two broad conclusions about the state of the American Consumer, American income making and spending behavior. Also Initial Claims Say We’re in Something Deeper than the Tech or Housing Bubbles First, Americans are still relatively frugal compared to recent past, although, there's some reason [...]
Initial Claims came in at +265K, making it over a year of Initial Claims below the psychologically important 300K threshold. In looking at comparable cycles, one has to go all the way back to the early 1970s to find a similar instance. This isn't your typical tech bubble. Nor is [...]
Hottest Housing Market On Tuesday, the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) will release its first estimate of home price appreciation in 2016. With New and Existing Home Sales also on top early in the week, now seems like a good time to review how the housing market in the U.S. [...]
American Retail Sales Today's retail sales figures disappointed, with a sharp downward revision for January and continued weakness in February. Retail sales in the U.S. are now floating at just 3.1% year-on-year. The U.S. retail picture comes after Saturday's weaker-than-expected Chinese retail sales figure of 10.2% year-over-year. Question: How are American consumers [...]
The Stock Market... It's a packed week for economic indicators. The week includes retail sales, industrial production, capacity utilization, housing starts, consumer and producer prices, Empire manufacturing, and consumer confidence. That's jut the U.S. side. Although the week is packed, there's only one indicator that really matters this week. Wednesday's [...]
Typically, the monthly jobs report is skewed in one direction. This month, it's difficult to say what signal the jobs report is. Here's a look at 5 positive and 5 negative signals from the first jobs report of 2016. Jobs Report - The Positive Signals #1 Productivity Perhaps the strongest figures from the [...]
The Jobs Report - One of the first things one learns when studying for beginning financial exams is the difference between a leading indicator, a coincident indicator, and a lagging indicator. In general, the stock market is considered a leading indicator of economic activity. What is the jobs report? A [...]
China Hard Landing - Around the end of November through the first couple weeks of December, Wall Street analysts release outlooks for the coming year. One prediction that appears to be so widespread that it receives little debate is that the China growth outlook is weakening, and growth will probably [...]
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