The stock market currently is even more overvalued than it was at the bull market peaks of both March 2000 and October 2007 — according to not just one, but two, valuation measures. That at least is the message of an analysis released earlier this week by Ned Davis Research, the quantitative research firm. What…
Is It Time To Buy Into Groupon At Current Prices? Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN) has continued to have a tough year, and the stock has continued to roll down the hill for the year so far. With the holiday season well under way, should investors look to pick up some Groupon shares at such a cheap stock price?…
When we first detailed the link between a devaluing currency, increasing restrictions on outflows of China capital, and Bitcoin , the virtual currency soared (driven by Chinese flows, just as predicted). The last few days, as China has once again started devaluing its currency, authorities once again moved to tighten capital outflows – this time through caps on credit-card withdrawals (as…
For those looking for a bit of humor this weekend, here’s an article for the “just in the nick of time” bucket. Back in the Saddle Bloomberg reports writes Ally Returns to Mortgage Business Two Years After Total Exit. Ally, whose defunct GMAC Mortgage unit was one of the biggest lenders of subprime mortgages in the…
Our analysis of final business sales data (retail plus wholesale plus manufacturing) shows unadjusted sales declined compared to the previous month – and there was a decline of the rolling averages. Even with inflation adjustments, business sales are in contraction. The inventory-to-sales ratios remain at recessionary levels. Econintersect Analysis: unadjusted sales rate of growth decelerated 2.1 % month-over-month, anddown 4.0…
This year has been a tough one for the energy sector. I honestly thought we would see recovery in Q4, but it might be another year away. All year I have been buying positions with familiar names – Chevron (CVX), National-Oilwell Varco (NOV), Kinder Morgan (KMI), ConocoPhilips (COP), BP, etc. I am long oil, but…
The collapse of junk bonds reminds me of 1994-95 when Greenspan’s Fed raised interest rates. That led to many bankruptcies in the high yield bonds which plowed its way throughout the high yield space. The Fed’s ZIRP monetary policies over the past 7 years have led to a boom for income seekers generally. On the…
Last week, the IMF admitted the Chinese renminbi to the Special Drawing Right with a surprisingly large weighting of 10.92%. That makes it the third-largest weighting, more than the weightings of sterling and the yen. This should increase the proportion of world trade invoiced in renminbi and, over the long term, remove restrictions on Chinese…
The US dollar turned in a mixed performance in the week following the ECB’s surprise and the healthy US jobs report. In some ways, the greenback was like a fulcrum, not the driver. The dollar-bloc currencies and the Norwegian krona were on one side, and the euro, Swiss franc, yen, and sterling were on the…
The fairy tale told in early 2015 was that a collapse in the price of Crude Oil and other commodities was going to be huge boon for the U.S. consumer, the economy, and the financial markets. In the past month, as we have witnessed multi-year lows across the commodity space, the story seems to have changed….
