Please watch my new YouTube video: Three Recession Stock Sells
I’m starting up my video again–this time using YouTube as a platform. My one-hundredth-and fourteenth YouTube video “Three Recession Sells” went up today. This week’s video takes a look at what I’m calling consumer discretionary...
Oil is up, stocks (outside energy) are down–how long will this anti-correlation last?
Oil rallied again today with U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate up 4.79% on the day to $114.79 a barrel and international benchmark Brent up 5.12% to $121.39 a barrel. So, naturally, oil and gas equities stocks are up today. And the broader market is down. What...
From buy on the dip to sell on the bounce–this is a stock market in transition
Yesterday, March 17, the stocks, and especially the technology stocks, that have been pummeled in 2022 continued their three-day bounce. For another day, at least, buy on the dip proved to be a very profitable adventure. Lithium recycling startup LiCycle (LICY), for...
Extreme day to day volatility is hiding the stock market’s trends–and 4 ways to put this volatility to use
Consternation isn’t an investment strategy. Although I certainly understand that reaction to current stock market moves. The day to day volatility is that extreme. But if we focus on that volatility and on how confusing this market is, I think we’re in...
Recession expectations slowly climbing–slowly driving odds of a recession higher
Recessions have a huge “sentiment” component in their causation. Consumers and CEOs look around at the economy, assess their feelings about the future economy, and decide that the prudent course is to cut back on spending to prepare for the coming economic...
Retail sales stronger than expected–there’s hope yet of fending off a recession
Retail sales in July climbed 0.7% from June. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had predicted a 0.3% climb. Retail sales excluding autos were up 1.0% month over month. Economists had projected a 03% gain. Nonstore retail sales (that is the Internet) were up 2.8%...
Numbers on factory orders and durable goods show economy remains in not-too-strong, not-too-weak Goldilocks track
Business investment remained weak according to this mornings report on durable goods. Orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft–a measure of business investment–remained weak in February, falling 0.1% for the month. However, shipments of...
Jobs numbers show solid but slow growth in U.S. economy
The U.S. economy added 196,000 net new jobs in March. That’s a huge increase from the 33,000 jobs added in February (revised upward from the original 20,000) and showed that the plunge in the February jobs total was an aberration. Economists surveyed by...
Recessions are built on negative shifts in sentiment so today’s news isn’t good
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index fell to 58.9 from 60 in the week ended March 31, according to a report Thursday. That’s an eight-week low. Survey respondents’ sentiment on their personal finances posted the steepest two-week drop since 2015. All three main...
The world’s bond markets stop to think about whether the rally has gone too far
It’s all my fault. I go away for two days to tour colleges with my daughter, and global bond markets soar as everybody in the world decides to seek safety simultaneously. Today’s pause has very little to do with my return to my desk. The rise in bond...
Today markets see recession warning in inversion of the yield curve
It was always implicit in the Federal Reserve’s decision on Wednesday that all interest increase in 2019 were off the table and that the central bank would end its $50 billion a month balance sheet run off in September. Yeah, lower interest rates are a boost to...
Has the Fed panicked? Should investors?
Let’s remind ourselves of exactly how big a policy u-turn the Federal Reserve has steered in the last three months. In December the Fed was looking at 2 interest rate increases in 2019 and an announcement of an end to its balance sheet run off by, maybe,...Markets talk themselves out of belief in brutal retail numbers
Overall retail sales fell 1.2% in December from November, according to the Commerce Department. That’s the worst drop in nine years. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected a 0.1% gain in retail sales. Out of the gate stocks fell today on the news with...
Forget recession worries–the big danger now is in the credit cycle
The Federal Reserve and the world’s other central banks face an impossible choice. On the one hand, they could have tighten the money supply by raising interest rates or other means. That would have risked sending economies near recession into...
Jobs report today adds to Fed puzzle
Last week the Federal Reserve signaled a huge policy change–no (or at most one) interest rate increase in 2019 and flexibility on continuing/ending the $50 billion a month program to reduce the size of the Fed’s balance sheet. Markets cheered the shift on...
Tomorrow morning’s retail sales report for November: really tough comparisons
Economists surveyed by Briefing.com are expecting the 8:30 a.m. New York time report on November retail sales to show month to month growth of 0.2%. That wouldn’t be quite so likely to disappoint the market except that retail sales climbed 0.8% month to month in...
It’s important to remember on this down, down, down day that an earnings growth slump in 2019 and a 2019 recession aren’t the same thing
It’s hard to take a step back on a day when the Dow Jones Industrial average closed down more than 700 points (and 3.10%), but that’s exactly what I’m going to suggest. The huge sell off was driven by three major factors in my opinion. First, the...
Battle over bond yields, interest rates shifts to 2019
Remember back at the beginning of 2018 when bond investors and traders couldn’t agree on whether the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates two times, or three times or four times in the year? (It wound up being four.) Well, we’re looking at a replay...How much is that house? At least 10% below the asking price
When sales of existing homes fell in August–for the first time since March–home sellers jumped into action, slashing the asking price on their properties. The average discount from asking price to sale price was 10% as of October 1, according to Trulia, a...Job loss is slowing but not very quickly
Initial claims for unemployment–that’s the number of people filing claims for unemployment for the first time because they’ve just lost a job–fell by 33,000 from the previous week to just 521,000, according to data released this morning by the...Do you see a pattern here? Is it a good sign for the economy that consumers are eating more cereal and TV dinners?
Let them eat cereal. And TV dinners. Cake may need to wait for the recovery. This morning General Mills (GIS) reported fiscal first quarter earnings of $1.28 a share, a huge 25 cents a share better than Wall Street was expecting. And the company raised its guidance...We have nothing to fear but a replay of 1937 itself
The specter of 1937 hangs over the economy and the stock market. That’s the year that over confidence that the Roosevelt administration had whipped the Great Depression and that it was time to balance the federal budget led to another deep recession that wiped out...It's official: This is now the longest recession since the Great Depression. Here's why that matters
With the GPD numbers for the quarter that ended on June 30 showing that the U.S. economy is still shrinking, it’s now official: the recession that began, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, in December 2007 is now the longest at 17 months and...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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