The U.S. has experienced higher temperatures during December so far. This is in sharp contrast to last month’s chill, marked by heavy snowfall in the Northeast and Midwest. However, temperatures may soon drop again following storm warnings for the Northeast. Bitter November Through November’s end, the U.S. had experienced an early and bitter winter. Portland,…
CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE The Dow is currently less than 1% from another milestone, which is the 18,000 level. The above table looks at how many days it took the Dow to reach each 1,000 level and the annualized return during each time period. As you can see the Dow could reach the 18,000…
Midcoast Energy Partners, L.P. (MEP – Snapshot Report) was a big mover last session, as the company saw its shares rise over 7% on the day. The move came on solid volume too with far more shares changing hands than in a normal session. This reverses the recent downtrend for the company as the stock is now down…
Now things will get interesting. As you know, we’ve been making a very public call to short the Nikkei through EWJ (short at $12, using Jan $12 puts at 0.55 as well as /NKD Futures short at 18,100) and today you’ve officially missed your chance as the Nikkei plunged back to 17,900, down 200 points…
If one ignores all traditional, staple indicators of a growing economy, such as stable (not plummeting) crude demand, stable (not plummeting) holiday spending and stable (not plummeting) McDonalds (MCD) comp store sales, then indeed the U.S. economy has “decoupled” from the rest of the world, and those who wish to demonstrate the same intellectual capacity…
Barry Ritholtz has had some good fun torching Tony Robbin’s All Weather Portfolio for having too much in bonds and commodities as well as being to backward looking and being put forth as a one size fits all. The latest was in his WaPo column dated December 5, 2014. He proceeded to offer his All…
Falling gas prices add to holiday cheer, but those are not an unvarnished good for the U.S. economy—thanks to bad economic policy. Oil selling at about $65 a barrel oil prices gives consumers and many businesses a lot of additional buying power, but it also puts a damper on the U.S. oil and gas boom….
Among various other reasons, the oil crash probably traumatized the global economy the most in the second half of this year. Sluggish demand thanks to a soft macroeconomic backdrop in some developed regions including the Euro zone and China, booming oil production resulting in abundant supply, price war induced by OPEC nations and a strengthening…
It’s the time of the year to reflect on the direction of the economy. For the past several years I have examined each individual component of The Conference Board’s Lagging, Coincident and Leading Economic Indicators and created my own diffusion index by ranking each indicator -1, 0 or +1. I have found that this method produces accurate forecasts…
