Why We Can’t Tell if the Market Is Half Empty or Half Full
Saturday, July 9th, 2011 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »The market is up 9% this year. Or is it? For investors, there isn't an easy way of knowing for sure. After Friday's drop, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index are 11% and 14% below their ...
The Million Dollar Question: Have Home Prices Bottomed?
Saturday, July 2nd, 2011 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »Woohoo! The April S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indicesshowed a monthly increase* in home prices for the first time in eight months today. On a month-over-month basis, the 10- and 20-City Composites were up 0.8% and 0.7% in April versus March. The chart below ...
CPI, Industrial Production, Jobless Claims
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »Equity futures are rebounding modestly this morning soon after substantial losses previously within the week erased most of 2011's gains. Bonds are in reverse within the procedure. S&P 500 futures are 12.00 points higher ...
Trade Policy: Always Looking Out for the Consumer
Thursday, June 10th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »NPR -- If you think your dry cleaning bills are high now, hang on. Wire hangers are getting more expensive due to import tariffs on cheaper hangers from China. So dry cleaning operators are asking customers to return ...
Free Trade, Globalization & “The Great Moderation”
Thursday, June 10th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »In recent decades, as foreign trade and investment have been rising as a share of the U.S. economy, recessions have actually become milder and less frequent (see chart above, click to enlarge). The softening of the business cycle has become ...
French & German Are Out, Hindi & Mandarin Are IN
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »MUMBAI--Hindi is the new Mandarin. Just as Mandarin is being learned by youngsters all over the world to give them a strategic advantage with the emerging China, Hindi too is being sought after as the language of the other Asian ...
CME Introduces Emerging Markets Index Futures
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »Stock returns in the emerging markets have soared over the last 4 years (33% per year for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index) compared to the U.S. (10% annual return for the S&P500), see the chart above (both indexes are set ...
Latest Victim of Ethanol: Kraft Foods
Sunday, June 6th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »NEW YORK (Associated Press) - Standard & Poor's Ratings Services yesterday warned it may lower its credit ratings on food maker Kraft Foods Inc. after the company's third-quarter profit sank 20 percent, partly due to high dairy costs. S&P ...
Forget the Obituaries, U.S. Economy is Alive & Well
Sunday, June 6th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »Monthly industrial production for January was released today by the Federal Reserve, and it was 2.3% above its January 2007 level (see graph above, click to enlarge). Industrial production is important because it is one of the recession-indicating variables watched ...
5,000 Retail Clinics & The Threat to the MD Cartel
Sunday, June 6th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »DETROIT--Retail health clinics have made their way into metro Detroit and are competing with doctors' offices for routine patient visits. Clinics contend that the quality of care is high and that when a patient requires urgent care or a visit ...
