Economy
Economic Calendar - How Much Worse Could Next Week Be?
You likely already know what jump-started Friday’s implosion, but just in case, it was a very weak job creation number for May. A total of 431K nonfarm payrolls were added, versus the anticipated 500K. Of that 431K though, 411K were temporary census workers; only 41K of them were permanent private sector jobs. [No, the math [...]
A Complete Economic Update in Less Than 30 Seconds
The big news from last week was on the real estate front. Not only were existing home sales better than expected, they were up from the prior reading, to 5.77 million. Even better, home prices - via the Case-Shiller Index - were up a stunning 2.4%, versus an expected 3.0% increase. The FHFA index confirmed [...]
Consumer Staples Wave a Red Flag - SYY, WMT, TSN, HRL Up
Tuesday was brutal for stocks, again, with the S&P 500 closing 1.4% lower to end the session at 1120.80. It was the tenth losing day of the last sixteen, and of those ten losing days, each has been made on higher volume than the previous day; none of the winners were technical ‘accumulation’.
While that clue [...]
Earnings Calendar, Scoreboard (No Wonder Stocks are Struggling)
The pace of earnings announcements is still slowing down, though enough have yet to post numbers that we still want to keep tabs on what’s on tap for the coming week. Here are the biggies.
By the way, this earnings season actually turned out to be a disappointment. About 58.8% of companies actually beat (under the [...]
Economic Calendar for Week of 5/16 - Capacity & Productivity Firm
It was a fairly modest week on the economic front, not in terms of the number of economic announcements, but in terms of impact. Unemployment claims - new as well as ongoing - continues to sink (444K and 4627K, respectively), and are now in their fourth week of a downtrend….. modest reason for hope, even [...]
Sector Rotation Waving a Small Red Flag… So Far
Nothing was all that dramatic last week on the sector front in terms of total gains or losses. Yet, it was a huge week in terms of the paradigm shift we saw unfold. How so? It’s just that the market’s biggest habitual losers suddenly because the biggest winner (relatively), and the market’s strongest sectors of [...]
Economic Announcement Calendar - Look Back, Look Ahead
It was a fairly light week on the economic front, and what little news we got was neither impactful, nor surprising.
Home prices finally rose on a year over year basis, but comparing February 2010’s prices to February 2009’s prices isn’t that big of a deal - we’re still well in the red on a multi-year [...]
Ahead of Themselves
While it’s true you own a stock for where it’s going rather than where it’s been, there’s an important footnote to the axiom….. the stock’s price still has to make sense, whether you’re looking forward or looking backward. That reality seems to have forgotten in a few cases during this earnings [...]
All the Consumer-Spending Clues Are Lining Up
If it were just one or two major retailers putting up some surprisingly-strong numbers, it would mean little. When the vast majority of them do – as they have for a few months now – the case against consumerism’s revival is increasingly tough to make. Did February’s retail sales results seal [...]
2011’s Growing Military Opportunity – Brains Over Brawn
The U.S. military of the 21st century may be getting ‘smarter’, but is sure isn’t getting any smaller. President Obama will be asking Congress for a whopping $708 billion to spend on various military needs next year. For perspective, that’s 4.1% bigger than 2010’s budget, and 8.7% more than President Bush [...]
