Official recession calls are the responsibility of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is understandably vague about the specific indicators on which they base their decisions. This committee statement is about as close as they get to identifying their method. There is, however, a general belief that there are four big indicators that the committee weighs…
Actually Returns Are Good When Fund Managers Are Taking Risk In a previous article, I showed the chart below without the 3 year forward S&P 500 returns. Some bears were claiming the fact that fund managers are taking more risk than ever meant impending doom. As I mentioned, there have been times when the fund…
Recently, several of the Modern Family phases deteriorated. The Russell 2000, in a confirmed Warning phase for 2 whole days, today, returned to an unconfirmed Bullish phase. After holding the major support at 144.50 to the tick on Wednesday, today, IWM rallied up over 1.4%. Regional Banks (KRE), which had jumped from a Distribution to…
In a long overdue, and not exactly surprising decision, moments ago the ISDA Determination Committee decided, after punting for three days in a row, that a Failure to Pay Credit Event has occurred with respect to both the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as well as Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. Specifically, in today’s determination, in response to…
Well, once again………… The market had been breaking down nicely, but China threw billions upon billions of yuan at the slight weakness in their market and made everything all better again for the bulls. Plus, here in the U.S., people have embraced the notion that cutting taxes for rich people will make a country over…
Utility stocks often form the backbone of a stock-based income-oriented portfolio. Especially in the case of regulated utilities, this makes a lot of sense. State regulations dictate rates, and thus companies’ returns on equity. Baked into all of that is usually a dividend–and even a modest level of dividend growth–that can be counted on year…
The Philly Fed Business Outlook Survey declined by remains in expansion. Key elements are in expansion but improved. Analyst Opinion of the Philly Fed Business Outllook Survey Consider this a stronger report than last month because of the improvement of the key internals. This is a very noisy index which readers should be reminded is…
You can always tell when the bureaucrats get involved in a particular industry… Suddenly every company needs a “chief compliance officer” and a whole department of his (or her) lieutenants to make sure everyone inside the business, well … complies — with the latest diktat. We can debate whether additional rules make things better or worse. One thing…
By 2040, the world will need to add the equivalent of India and China’s current energy system to meet the demands of a surging global population and rising incomes. Among all other forms of energy, solar PV (photovoltaic system) is forecasted to see the largest and fastest growth in new capacity additions as prices continue…
Introduction Aflac (AFL) is a Dividend Aristocrat that has increased its dividend for 35 consecutive years. True value investors are a rare breed, because it takes a special mindset and/or psyche to successfully implement a value investing strategy. This is especially true during major bull markets like we’ve experienced since the 1st quarter of 2009. Common…
