Today is jobs day. April numbers are due out later this morning. One of the metrics that economists keenly await is average hourly earnings for private-sector employees. The U.S. unemployment rate has dropped all the way to five percent – … Continued
Versus large-caps, small-caps inherently suffer from shorter operational history, less access to capital, lower trading liquidity, lack of support from most mutual funds, lack of familiarity, lack of/less Wall Street research, and what not. Understandably, they are regarded as risky. … Continued
Last week, the euro rallied two percent. There was some positive news on the fundamental front. Eurozone bank lending grew 1.1 percent year-over-year in March, slightly faster than February’s one-percent growth. Eurozone GDP expanded 0.6 percent in 1Q16 – the … Continued
The S&P 500 large cap index lost 1.3 percent last week. Intra-day, off the April 20th high through last Friday’s low, it is now down 2.8 percent. The index retreated after unsuccessfully trying to break out of a declining trend … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of April 26, 2016. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: Two different central-bank meetings, and two different market reactions this week. Haruhiko Kuroda, Bank of Japan governor, has a habit of surprising the … Continued
In the aggregate, tech earnings have been a disappointment in the current earnings season. With the exception of FB (Facebook), from Apple (AAPL) to Alphabet (GOOGL) to IBM (IBM) to Netflix (NFLX), 1Q16 results have left a bad taste in … Continued
March sales of existing and new homes were a mixed bag, with the former up 5.1 percent month-over-month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.33 million units, and the latter down 1.5 percent m/m to 511,000 units. Post-bubble, sales … Continued
With five sessions to go in April, the Nasdaq 100 index (4474.19) is down 0.2 percent, while the Russell 2000 small cap index (1146.69) is up 2.9 percent. Last week made a big difference, as the former was down 1.5 … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of April 19, 2016. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: That this is even being discussed in the press and among economists is a sign of how insane things have gotten in central … Continued
Depending on what data point we are looking at, U.S. inventory ranges from inflated to balanced. In the third and fourth quarters last year, inventory reduction took away 0.71 percent and 0.22 percent from real GDP growth, respectively (Chart 1). … Continued