Economy
Economic Barrage Slowing Down, Damage Done
There’s too much data from last week to look at all of it; we’ll just hit the highlights, starting with personal income and personal spending. The former was down 0.1% for September, while the latter was up 0.2%. Correspondingly, consumer credit levels were up by $2.1 billion…. the first increase in many, many months. Back [...]
In The Cue… Confidence, Real Estate Numbers (Nowhere To Go But Up?)
It was a light week in terms of economic data, but an important one on the real estate front - though not a great one. We did see a bump and a ‘beat’ in the number of building permits requested. There were 574K permits issued in May, and analysts were looking for 572K this time. [...]
Investment-Worthy Trend: Road and Rail Proves All It Needs To
Are you one of the folks who thinks the economy is slowing down? Not that there’s not some evidence to that end, but to be fair, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. One such piece of evidence is railroad freight activity in the United States (as well as in Canada).
In June, the total rail [...]
Weekly Outlook - Despite Google, Earnings Still Normal
Believe it or not, it actually wasn’t a bad week - Friday ruined what would have otherwise been a winning week, thanks to the worst possible news at the worst possible time (Google’s shortfall, and the Citigroup and Bank of America’s declining revenue).
Will this carry through into this week? Will this week’s slew of real [...]
What the Bears Are Saying/What the Bulls Are Saying
Is the glass half full, or half empty? Maybe both. It’s not going to stay half-and-half for long though. Here are the arguments both sides are making. They’re important to define, as changes to them (or lack thereof) will confirm or abate the looming re-entry in to a full-blown bear market.
The bears are saying…..
1. All [...]
Economic Update - Something to Build On
It may not be pretty, but at least it’s not bearish either. What’s that? While the market was largely distracted with earnings news last week - good at first, and then turning bad later in the week - we actually were dished out a ton of important economic news. Though we don’t have time and [...]
Earnings Numbers the ‘Crash’ Pundits Are Ignoring
Spooked? Most investors are rattled following Tuesday’s 3% implosion, fueled largely by a sudden and unexpected dip in Consumer Confidence (more below), and an adjustment in China’s growth rate - as evidenced by a leading indicators index - for April (from 1.7% to 0.3%). The question is, is this cause for worry? Though the answer [...]
This Week’s Economic Calendar Full of Land Mines
As we mentioned a week ago, home sales and home price data would kick-off last week’s trading, and round out the picture of the real estate industry that first started being patient by the prior week’s building permits and housing starts. Bluntly, things continued to look bad.
Existing home sales fell from 5.79 million to 5.66 [...]
Capacity Utilization, Productivity Up - Deny At Your Own Peril
We’ve mentioned before that two of the most accurate and helpful economic indicators are capacity utilization and industrial productivity…. both published in tandem by the Federal Reserve. And by ‘helpful’ we specifically mean ‘helpful to investors’, in that there’s a stunning degree of correlation between the market’s long-term trends and the economic data’s long-term trends. [...]
Building Permits, Housing Starts Down, But It Ain’t That Simple
Yep, just as the ‘experts’ figured, the end of the homebuyer tax credit was the beginning of the next real estate implosion, right? Building permits fell from 610K in April to 547K in May. Housing starts fell from 659K to 593K. Woe to all investors and real estate owners.
Before anyone starts banging the death drum, [...]
