Economists expected export prices to drop by 0.2%. Instead they fell 0.7%, outside the range of any Econoday Import/Export Estimate. A bounce back for petroleum prices helped to limit import-price contraction in September, coming in at only minus 0.1 percent. But contraction in export prices, where agriculture and not petroleum is the wild card, was very…
Revisiting Crude Oil Beginning in late August we have frequently discussed the possibility that a significant low in crude oil prices could be imminent in spite of the “obvious” lousy fundamentals. As blind luck would have it, the first of these articles (entitled “Is Crude Oil Close to a Low?”) was posted exactly one trading day before the low…
Let’s take a look at the biggest Biotech ETFs, as this was one of the market’s top sectors for several years and has recently undergone a pretty strong correction. As you can see on the following table, there are currently only 2 pure sector play Biotechnology ETFs that trade over 1 million average daily…
Week 39 of 2015 shows same week total rail traffic (from same week one year ago) and monthly total rail traffic (from same month one year ago) declined according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR) traffic data. Intermodal traffic moderately expanded year-over-year, which accounts for approximately half of movements. but weekly railcar counts continued in contraction….
Today’s release of the publicly available data from ECRI (Economic Cycle Research Institute) puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 132.5, up from 130.7 the previous week. The WLI annualized growth indicator (WLIg) is at -1.1, up 0.7 from the previous week, and well off its interim low of -4.7 in mid-January. “The White Queen’s Rule” More…
This past week saw the markets rebound off their lows which has brought the “bulls” rushing back claiming the correction is over. However, is that really the case? As I questioned earlier this week: “As you can see, the markets did retest the late August lows, and when combined with the very oversold conditions, led to…
For the fourth time today, gold has been aggressively bid higher. The latest move broke recent stops and took the precious metal to 3 week highs on heavy volume…
The US dollar is going to break down from the wedge this morning. The green arrows show that it made a higher low and a higher high in September, keeping a lame short-term uptrend in play. The black arrow shows where Uncle Buck seems to be headed today. A lower low should be watched for…
I’d like to address some aspects of the Greater Depression in this essay. I’m here to tell you that the inevitable became reality in 2008. We’ve had an interlude over the last few years financed by trillions of new currency units. However, the economic clock on the wall is reading the same time as it…
The latest Wall Street Journal survey finds that while a majority of economists continue to expect the Fed to hike rates in December, as a whole they are less confident than they have been. Moreover, as this Great Graphic illustrates, there has been a marked increase in those who do not expect a hike until…
