Today the Richmond Fed Manufacturing Composite Index was at 20 for the month of December, down from last month’s 30. Investing.com had forecast 22. Because of the highly volatile nature of this index, we include a 3-month moving average to facilitate the identification of trends, now at 20.7, which indicates expansion. The complete data series behind today’s…
Earlier this month I profiled the US stock market’s performance in search of context for deciding if recent returns have gone off the deep end. The results suggest that on a rolling 10-year basis, the numbers look middling. Next question: how does the S&P 500 stack up after adjusting for risk via several metrics? Let’s start by…
Some feel assets or charts have memories. If this is true, Tech bulls might be hoping that a certain level is forgotten! The above chart looks at Tech ETF (XLK) on a monthly basis, since 1998. XLK peaked at the 2000 highs at (1), where a bearish reversal pattern (bearish wick) took place. This monthly pattern ended…
What good is it for someone to gain a pipeline, yet lose another? The Forties pipeline is coming back but a loss of a Libyan oil pipeline has the oil bears in a less than festive mood. WTI oil hit $60 a barrel yesterday for the first time in 2 and a half years and…
WTI Crude Oil The WTI Crude Oil market gapped higher at the open on Tuesday, pulled back slightly to fill that gap, and then exploded to the upside to test the $60 level. By the end of the day, we did pull back slightly, but this looks like a market that is trying to break…
As the new year is upon us, investors are going to hear a lot about central bank policy and the future of interest rates. Wall Street, in particular, has had a dismal forecasting record, consistently over-estimating 10- year bond yields. What happens so often is that the forecasters do not adequately account for the current…
On Tuesday, the price of WTI reached a 2-year high at $59.6 following reports of an explosion at the biggest oil terminal in Libya. Previously, WTI started a strong bullish rise since June this year when it bottomed at $42. Since then, it has made higher highs and higher lows in a near-perfect zigzag manner….
Piper Jaffray analyst Harsh Kumar recommends using the pullback in shares of Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) on concerns over iPhone X demand as a buying opportunity. Despite “noise” of supply chain cuts, channel checks continue to indicate that the Apple (AAPL) supply chain is still working hard to meet demand, Kumar tells investors in a research…
European stocks are steady in post-Christmas trading if struggling for traction after a mixed session in Asia, amid trading thinned by a holiday-shortened week and ongoing worries about the tech sector; however a strong rally in commodities – including copper and oil – buoyed expectations for a strong 2018 and helped offset concerns over the…
I want to begin with what can go wrong in 2018 because I’m optimistic about America’s prospects in the coming year, and I want to end on the optimistic scenario that should occur next year. But there are huge land mines ahead that could lead to a very different scenario. The first and foremost is the prospect…
