Clik here to view.
Not A Cycle; Weakness Produces Further Weakness No Matter How Confident
If economists are hoping for more than signs of wage acceleration, revisions to the Personal Income data series are going to make it that much harder to justify still seeing them. Income was revised...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Expectations and Acceptance of Potential
The University of Michigan reports that consumer confidence in September slipped a little from August. Their Index of Consumer Sentiment registered 95.3 in the latest month, down from 96.8 in the prior...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bi-Weekly Economic Review: Markets At Extremes
Economic Reports Production Production ended the year on a strong note but early readings from January are not as positive. The December industrial production report headline was strong at a 0.9% gain...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bi-Weekly Economic Review: One Down, Three To Go
Economic Reports Economic Growth & Investment We pay particular attention to broad based indicators of growth. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index and the Conference Board’s Leading Economic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bi-Weekly Economic Review: Growth Expectations Break Out?
There are a lot of reasons why interest rates may have risen recently. The federal government is expected to post a larger deficit this year – and in future years – due to the tax cuts. Further...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bi-Weekly Economic Review: Examining Rates
Is the rate hiking cycle almost done? Not the question on everyone’s minds right now so a good time to ask it, I think. A couple of items caught my attention recently that made me at least think about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Monthly Macro Monitor: We’re Not There Yet
It’s been a slow turnin’ From the inside out A slow turnin’ But you come about Slow learnin’ But you learn to sway A slow turnin’ baby Not fade away Now I’m in my car I got the radio on I’m yellin’...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Day For Rate Cuts
Well, that wasn’t he had in mind. The whole point of a rate cut, any rate cut let alone an emergency fifty, is to signal especially the stock market that the Fed is in the business of…something. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
This Is No Time To Be Sentimental About Sentiment
OK, so not all of Germany’s bellwether business sector is gaga over Christine Lagarde. The particular subset of respondents who answer the survey from that country’s ZEW, if you recall, are absolutely...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Forty-Seven Explains Much
For Jay Powell’s inflation case, the University of Michigan provided it with some badly needed support. Telling the world he “flooded” it with “digital money printing” three-quarters of a year ago,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weekly Market Pulse: Who’s The Boss?
I told you last week that there were strange things going on in the labor market but I had no idea how much of an understatement that really was. Much of last week’s economic focus was on the inflation...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weekly Market Pulse: Happy Anniversary!
Today is the 50th anniversary of the “Nixon shock”, the day President Richard Nixon closed the gold window and ended the post-WWII Bretton Woods currency agreement. That agreement, largely a product of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weekly Market Pulse: Time For A Taper Tantrum?
The Fed meets this week and is widely expected to say that it is talking about maybe reducing bond purchases sometime later this year or maybe next year or at least, someday. Jerome Powell will hold a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weekly Market Pulse: Paging George Katona
Consumer sentiment hit a decade low last month, falling 6 points from an already low level. The culprit? Inflation, which we learned last week hit a 3 decade high in October. And if the founder of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weekly Market Pulse: Time To Get Contrarian?
Remember, your goal in investing isn’t to earn average returns; you want to do better than average. Thus your thinking has to be better than that of others – both more powerful and at a higher level....
View ArticleClik here to view.
China Then Europe Then…
This is the difference, though in the end it only amounts to a matter of timing. When pressed (very modestly) on the slow pace of the ECB’s “inflation” “fighting” (theater) campaign, its President,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Shipping Around Retail ‘Inflation’
This whole “inflation” scenario isn’t really that difficult to piece together, effect from cause. Sure, Jay Powell’s trying to nuke it by hiking the federal funds rate, but no one really uses fed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weekly Market Pulse: No One Said This Was Easy
Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. Warren Buffett People are always asking me where’s the outlook good, but that’s the wrong question. The right question is: Where is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Eurodollar Futures Interpretation Is Everywhere
Consumer confidence in Germany never really picked up all that much last year. Conflating CPIs with economic condition, this divergence proved too big of a mystery. When the German GfK, for example,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weekly Market Pulse: There Is No Certainty In Investing
Investors crave certainty. They want to know that there are definitive signals for them to follow as they adjust their investments to fit the current market and economy. They want to know that A leads...
View Article