Apollo Education Group, Inc.’s (APOL – Analyst Report) adjusted earnings of 44 cents per share in the first quarter of fiscal 2015 beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 41 cents by about 7%. However, earnings declined 58.1% year over year due to lower revenues and profits, and higher taxes. Adjusted earnings exclude restructuring and other…
Well, I got this one wrong. I didn’t think the S&P had the juice to put in the day that it did, although volume was perhaps a little disappointing. Volume did enough to register an accumulation day, although buying volume was well down on previous selling volume. In terms of technicals, only On-Balance-Volume generated a…
I am wondering why the rate of US house construction remains so low. I see two candidate explanations. The first is that lending standards remain very tight — the mortgage lenders having been very badly burnt once remain twice shy. The other is that potential house buyers no longer perceive owner occupied housing to be…
Max is attending his first Comedian’s Convention. He’s very excited to see all the famous comics sitting at tables all around him. Jay Leno gets up and says “Number 64.” Everyone in the hall laughs uproariously, except Max. He turns to an older comedian and says, “What’s everybody laughing about?” “These are all professional comedians,”…
Written by Gary The afternoon markets drifted fractionally higher as the US dollar climbed back up into the important resistance zone that it broke out of once early this morning. WTI oil climber into the 48.70 range this afternoon, stopped and then traded sideways in a narrow trading zone until the close. Important to note that…
Have you been to the zoo when the monkeys start rattling their cages and screeching in unison? That about sums up the last 24 hours since the euro zone’s December CPI printed at negative 0.2% versus prior year. Within minutes of the release, brokerage house “economists” were out in force caterwauling that $1 trillion of ECB bond purchases…
My dogs are telling me that there are squirrels running loose in the neighborhood that must be pursued, so I’ll make this quick. All it took was one little word – “catastrophic” – from a Fed governor to send the markets into a bullish orgy today. It wasn’t a good day for me, but I…
Investing in a stock means you have bought a small piece of ownership of that business. Dividend stocks differ from normal stocks in that they pay you for owning them. When a company elects to pay dividends, they are giving a portion of company profits to the owners. Stocks that reward their owners with actual cash…
We are seeing a resurgence of effective demand from both long term yields (borrowing costs) and headline inflation falling. What if 10-year yields fall to 1.6% by 2nd quarter 2015? And what if headline inflation falls to -0.5% by 2nd Q too? (Barclays is predicting negative headline inflation through 2015, Matthew B tweet.) I graph what…
Stocks were on a tear higher today despite the worse than expected unemployment claims. The pundits were talking about ‘oil stabilizing’ as given a boost to stocks, and the foolishness of the first few days of the year correction, but in reality it was the reassuring words from the Fed head last night that the…
