Monthly Archives: May 2018

Growth & Inflation Are Not The Same

Ever since the economy started weakening in 2007 all the way until the Fed’s first hike of this cycle in late 2014, the Fed’s main concern has been boosting economic growth and improving employment. There has been mediocre success on the growth front, primarily a function of demographics, but luckily the fiscal policy stimulus through…

Sensex Trades Flat; Pharma Stocks Gain

After opening the day in green, share markets in India witnessed choppy trading activity throughout the day and are presently below the dotted line. Sectoral indices are trading on a mixed with stocks in the pharma sector and stocks in the realty sector leading the losses, while stocks in the pharma sector are trading in green. The BSE Sensex is down by 11…

Outlook For Stocks – Monday, May 14

Thoughts April was probably the stock market’s bottom. Momentum became very oversold in April. The road to a new all-time high won’t be easy. It’ll probably take at least a month. Buybacks are still far below 2007-levels. Not a sign that the equities bubble today = the equities bubble of the 2000s. The stock market…

The Fed Model

Way back in 1997, the Federal Reserve surprised the financial community with comments relating to the S&P 500 and interest rates. “The run-up in stock prices in the spring was bolstered by unexpectedly strong corporate profits for the first quarter. Still, the ratio of prices in the S&P 500 to consensus estimates of earnings over the coming…

COT Report: CHF And JPY Out Of Favor As Inflation Rises

Looking at this week’s Commitments of Traders Report, speculators are selling inflation-sensitive currencies including the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc. The British pound remains out of favor following both poor economic data and weak guidance from the Bank of England. Finally, speculators also dumped positions in the Australian dollar, thanks to ongoing US-China trade…

Global Consumer Confidence

There is a little-watched and relatively obscure set of indicators produced by Thomson Reuters and Ipsos, called the primary consumer sentiment indexes. These provide a standardized approach to measuring consumer sentiment across a number of countries, and provide timely insight into consumer trends globally. With the release of the May data this week I thought it…