The Conference Board Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the U.S. improved 0.6% over last month. The index growth has been on a solid growth trend. This index is designed to forecast the economy six months in advance. The market expected growth of 0.3% to 0.7% (consensus 0.6%) in the LEI (versus the 0.6% reported). ECRI’s…
Source: flickr Dear Diary, The Dow rose 288 points yesterday, or 1.7%. Gold was flat, despite further dithering from the Fed on when it will raise interest rates. Last night, we dined with the head of the SEC. Actually, Ms. White dined at the table next to us. But it made us feel as…
This year will not go down in history as the golden year of the Chinese economy; that much is certain. To the contrary even, the Chinese economy has hit a very rough patch and the question is whether the Chinese economy can recover from here. Analysts are not positive about the Chinese economy at all…
Americans better fill up their gas tanks now, because oil prices are going back up soon. Oil broke through $70 per barrel, just as I predicted. Prices may continue to drop to around $50 briefly, but the ultimate resting point will be around $60. In classic American shortsightedness, the nation responded ridiculously by buying more…
Never was the rejection of Poland against the euro so strong. The Polish people fear that above all, they would suffer from the introduction of the Euro. The general feeling now among the majority is that the Euro would be socially a disaster. The Government of Poland would need indeed to hold a referendum to introduce…
Never was the rejection of Poland against the euro so strong. The Polish people fear that above all, they would suffer from the introduction of the Euro. The general feeling now among the majority is that the Euro would be socially a disaster. The Government of Poland would need indeed to hold a referendum to introduce…
To anybody who has been following financial news for any length of time, the “news” that the U.S. Federal Reserve intends to follow a patient approach to raising interest rates does not qualify as news at all. The Fed under Ben Bernanke and now under Janet Yellen had made no secret of the fact that…
We are sure this data is entirely dependable but when continuing jobless claims spike over 6% last week and collapse almost 6% this week – and the labor department says there is nothing unusual – we hold our hands up and laugh. Continuing claims printed 2.37m (beating expectations), and initial claims dropped 6k to 289k (beating expectations)….
Thought people would find this of interest. This is not updated from September being the last observation. In 1999 when this bottomed West Texas Intermediate was under $12/bbl and gasoline was under $1/ gal.
by Erik McCurdy, Prometheus Market Insight Fueled by a historic amount of direct stimulus from the Federal Reserve, the cyclical bull market in stocks that began in 2009 accelerated into an unsustainable advance, creating a massive equity bubble and causing investment risk to increase to one of the three highest readings during the past 85 years….
