Companies are sitting on the highest percentage of cash since the 1960s
Want to know why the U.S. economic recovery isn’t producing more jobs? For part of the explanation, look at where companies are putting their cash. With record levels of cash on company balance sheets U.S. companies aren’t putting it into expanding production, buying...Subsidies end and housing starts plunge even more than expected
Hard to find a silver lining in this data. Housing starts in May fell to a 593,000 annual rate, according to numbers released this morning, June 16, by the Department of Commerce. That was a 10% drop from April’s annual rate of 659,000. The April rate itself was...Get ready for a flood of economic news beginning Wednesday that's strong enough to move stocks
On the economic front, Monday and Tuesday of this week are the calm before a storm of reports with market-moving potential hits on Wednesday. The biggest news in the first two days of the week is the June Empire Manufacturing Index, a survey of manufacturers in New...Who's afraid of the index of leading indicators?
I don’t put much stock in the Conference Board’s Index of Leading Indicators. Seven out of 10 of the indicators are actually economic data—the Commerce Department released building permit data, for example, on Tuesday, May 18 —that were published before the index was...Good news from the U.S. jobs number–although the stock market doesn't care
The U.S. economy keeps chugging along. It might even be picking up steam. (Not that the stock market is in any mood to listen today.) Nonfarm payrolls added 290,000 jobs in April, according to Department of Labor data released today, May 7. That’s well above the...And now for some good news (on the U.S. economy anyway)
You’d never know it by looking at plunging U.S. stock prices but the economic data this week have been solid. The numbers point to a U.S. economic recovery that is at worst chugging along and that at best might even be picking up speed. So for example, factory orders...The recession is over so where's the cheering?
The recession ended today, Friday, April 30. At 8:30 a.m. to be precise. That’s when the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that U.S. GDP had increased for the third straight quarter. After growing by 2.2% in the third quarter of 2009, and 5.6% in the fourth...Is the slowing in the rate of home price increases, a forecast that the economic recovery will slow at the end of 2010?
This is exactly what I’m afraid of for the 12 months ahead. Yesterday’s numbers on home prices suggest that as the economic stimulus money gradually dries up over the next 12 months, the economic recovery will lose some steam. Not enough to send us back into recession...Update Johnson Controls (JCI)
Before the stock market opened in New York on Friday, April 23, Johnson Controls (JCI) announced earnings of 43 cents a share (excluding one-time items.) That was four cents a share above Wall Street estimates for the company’s second quarter of fiscal 2010. Including...Go for the growth–and where to find it at a reasonable price
Three cheers. Growth is back. Of course, what investors want to know is where is economic growth likely to produce the biggest increase in earnings. And, perhaps even more important, where hasn’t growth, actual or just hoped for, already been priced into share prices....Cheap money is the root of all financial bubbles–and it's still at work now
If you’d like to see somebody—lots of somebodies, if I had my wish–go to jail for their role in creating the lob al financial crisis, then $8 million looks cheap. That’s the budget for the Financial Crisis Investigation Commission. If, just for starters, some of...So, yes, we've got an economic recovery, but how strong is still an open question
Not so fast, okay? Friday’s news that the U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in March was indeed good news. I think it does mean that an economic recovery is indeed underway. But that’s always been just one of the three big questions about the economy as it recovers from...Good news from Oracle is better news for the U.S. economy
There wasn’t anything wrong with the earnings results that Oracle (ORCL) announced yesterday. For the company’s fiscal third quarter, which ended in February, revenue climbed to $6.5 billion, up 18% from the third quarter of fiscal 2009. (Excluding currency effects...Are things as bad as most investors think they are? I'd say No
One of the cliches about bear markets is that they’re so devastating to investors’ portfolios because they (1)inflict huge losses in the sell-off and then (2) leave most investors so traumatized that they can’t bring themselves to participate in any rallies. Well,...Fortunes turn: Now it's Boeing gaining on Airbus problems
It’s always good news for a company when a competitor admits that it has potential issues with a technology crucial to a new product. This time the competitor making the admission was EADS, the parent of Airbus, telling Wall Street analysts On Friday, March 19, that...What's on the agenda after healthcare?
While Republicans battled Democrats (and Democrats battled themselves) over healthcare, not much of anything else got done. Not reform of the financial system, not serious action on jobs (the $18 billion “jobs” bill that Congress did pass isn’t even a down payment),...How long can this last? The U.S. stock market is out performing the world
I can think of a dozen reasons why in the long term U.S. stocks will underperform stocks in China, Brazil, India, Canada may be even Norway, South Africa, Germany, and Turkey. Huge government debt, highly leveraged consumers, under-investment in infrastructure, a...Brazil becomes a big player in the profitless global economic recovery
Want to know why this is going to be a profitless recovery? And not just in the United States either. Then look at the IPO (initial public offering) planned by OSX Estaleiros, a start-up ship building company. The March 19 offering aims to raise $5.6 billion. (For...I only wish manufacturing made up more of the economy
Manufacturing continues to contribute more than its share to the economic recovery, according to index numbers released this morning (March 1) in the Institute for Supply Management survey of purchasing managers. Unfortunately, manufacturing accounts for only about...Can CEOs destroy shareholder value in an acquisition? Just watch them
I call it destruction by acquisition. Forget the synergies, the cost-savings, the cross-selling that CEOs tout when they announce one of these deals. Too many of the huge merger and acquisition (M&A) deals struck in the second half of 2009 and that are still being...Is today's good news on home prices only a false dawn?
So how stable is this stability in home prices? That’s the question raised by the good news on home prices from today’s (February 23) release of the most recent S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices. On a seasonally adjusted basis the index climbed 0.3% in...Was Lowe's earnings report good or bad news for the economy?
So when does beating low expectations stop counting as good news? It’s an important question for the stock market and for the economy as a whole. After easy to beat earnings comparisons in the first and second quarters, stocks face a bigger challenge in the third and...My thin reeds say the first half of 2010 will be surprisingly strong in the U.S.
Thin reeds. You wouldn’t want to count on a single one to support much weight but bind enough of them together and you can sail across the Atlantic—or find a profitable investing trend before it’s visible in the official numbers. Sometimes the reeds all point in...How to worry–and when–in 2010
This is my fourth take on how to worry in less than six months. I wrote the first one in October when the Dow Jones Industrial Average had poked its head above 10,000 for the first time in a year (and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index was just about to kiss...And now for something NOT about the euro: Good news for U.S. growth in today's inventory numbers
And now for a break from the euro and today’s “They will bail out Greece/They won’t bail out Greece” rumor fest. Real news on the U.S. economy and it’s very good news indeed. Inventories at U.S. wholesalers dropped in December, according to data released this morning...Honey, we bankrupted the kids!
Worried that the global financial crisis combined with the Great Recession in the United States has bankrupted not just ourselves but our kids and their kids? Good. You should be worried. Maybe then we’ll do something about the problem before it’s too late. First,...Blame it on Lisbon…and Madrid and Budapest.
First it was Greece. Now it’s Spain, Portugal, and Eastern Europe. Heaven forbid that investors shouldn’t have a financial crisis somewhere in the world to worry about. A European Union pledge of support for the Greek government’s plan to cut its current 12.7% (of...Were more jobs lost in the recession than we thought?
Watch out for some nasty revisions in the employment numbers due out on Friday. The data release will include a revision of numbers stretching back into 2009 that’s likely to show bigger job losses during the recession than previously calculated. Paul Dales of Capital...Great news on U.S. GDP even if a traumatized stock market can manage only a small gain
That counts as really good news. The U.S. economy grew by 5.7% in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to the first take on GDP numbers released by the Commerce Department this morning (January 29). Economists had been expecting 4.6% growth for the quarter. If the...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
Every post from Jubak Picks straight to your mailbox. And they're free!