The Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Commission has released the latest report on Traffic Volume Trends, data through February. “Travel on all roads and streets changed by -0.1% (-0.2 billion vehicle miles) for February 2018 as compared with February 2017. Travel for the month is estimated to be 226.7 billion vehicle miles.” The 12-month moving average was…
The Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Commission has released the latest report on Traffic Volume Trends, data through February. “Travel on all roads and streets changed by -0.1% (-0.2 billion vehicle miles) for February 2018 as compared with February 2017. Travel for the month is estimated to be 226.7 billion vehicle miles.” The 12-month moving average was…
Why do reported growth rates differ for the same variable? Refer to the last three years of GDP data to see… Figure 1: Quarterly GDP, SAAR, FRED series GDPC1 (blue line), annual, FRED series GDPCA (green bars), in billions of Chained 2009$. 2017 q4/q4 growth rate (red arrow); annual 2017 y/y growth rate (green arrow); 2017Q4…
I’d say short the blasted things, but they have earnings next week and a slew of housing numbers coming out, as well. And that is simply too risky to be taking a short position on. If you are associated with the home building process in any way, except for the being the bank itself, your…
The Federal Reserve has been determined to create “Wealth Effects” throughout the economy since 2008, which has left the majority of Main Street on the sidelines. The Fed’s objective was to make American households feel wealthier by pushing up the valuations of stocks and bonds. However, this paper wealth mentality has worked beautifully for Wall…
Who noticed this one tiny thing on Bitcoin’s price chart: the rounded bottom in March/April of 2018? It is a small but extremely powerful signal, and it suggests that Bitcoin is back in a bull market in 2018! Many try to make cryptocurrency investing decisions very complicated, yes overcomplicated and noisy. Some refer to news articles,…
It’s February of 2016 and the stock market has rallied over 250% off the 2008 lows in an almost uninterrupted bull market. But some cracks appeared to be showing. China was looking wobbly and the market had flash crashed a few times. Emerging markets were down 30%+ from their highs. Oil had cratered from $110+…
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the U.S improved this month – and the authors say “labor market components made negative contributions in March and bear watching in the near future.” Analyst Opinion of the Leading Economic Index Because of the significant backward revisions, I do not trust this index. This index is…
Stocks Rally Slightly On Wednesday This week has been great for equities as they rallied Wednesday again. It was a much smaller rally than the prior two days as the S&P 500 was up 0.08%. The chart below is my basic technical analysis which shows that the market has been making lower highs. The S&P 500…
Yesterday, for the umpteenth time in the last few years, we exposed the clear manipulation of VIX at the futures settlement auction – spiking VIX to favor the record long positioning of VIX futures speculators. With stocks quietly drifting sideways ahead of the US cash open this morning, VIX suddenly spiked reprising a pattern of jerky moves…
