The Industrials Sector includes twenty-three industries all related to designing, fabricating and servicing stuff we want and use. The industrials industries range from aerospace and defense to waste management with all the transportation, business services, and equipment required in between. Today I’m reviewing a Large Cap Swedish-based Diversified Industrials firm engaged in the manufacture and…
The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is a simple computation: You take the Civilian Labor Force (people age 16 and over employed or seeking employment) and divide it by the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (those 16 and over not in the military and or committed to an institution). The result is the participation rate expressed as…
In this past weekend’s missive, I discussed the market once again retesting support at the 200-dma. “As stated, the market did defend its 200-dma and is very close to reversing its short-term ‘sell signal.’” “That’s the good news. The not so good news is that while the market did muster a rally on Friday, it still…
The headlines say consumer credit rate of annual growth insignificantly declined from last month. Our analysis sees little change in growth since last month. Analyst Opinion of the Consumer Credit Situation There was a modest downward revision of the previous months’ data. Not only does this data set suffer from backward revision (at times moderate…
This 4-pack looks at a few popular stock indices since the first of this year on a daily basis. Each Index peaked in January, creating the top of the trading range and each bottomed in February, creating the bottom of the trading range. Over the past few months, each index is creating a series of…
Oil prices surged closing at above $70 a barrel for the first time in three and a half years, only to have a nuclear meltdown in aftermarket trading. WTI further set a record 2.7 million contracts of open interest, but fell hard after President Donald Trump tweeted that he would announce his decision on the…
The Pound Sterling edged lower ahead of this week’s policy meeting of the Bank of England. While analysts and economists are generally forecasting that the central bank will maintain the status quo as regards interest rates, investors are concerned that the Brexit negotiations could have a less than favorable outcome and thus have trimmed their…
More geopolitical turmoil is probably not what the doctor ordered for markets on a day when Trump’s decision on the Iran deal is on deck, but you know what they say about “when it rains”. As Barclays recently noted, the geopolitical environment “is littered with a historically large number – by one measure, the highest since…
The Fed turns neither hawkish nor dovish. It turns symmetric! What does it mean for the gold market? Fed Pauses in May In line with expectations, after an upward move in March to a range of 1.5-1.75 percent, the U.S. central bank unanimously left the federal funds rate unchanged at its recent meeting in May: In view of realized…
Several months ago, I started toying with a simple model of interest rates and job growth.* Based on the historical evidence, I suggested that: 1. a YoY increase in the Fed funds rate equal to the YoY% change in job growth has in the past almost infallibly been correlated with a recession within roughly 12 months. …
