Marking the first occurrence since 2010, the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude dropped below $70 per barrel after the international cartel of oil producers – Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) – decided against an oil production cut. In the meeting at the Austrian capital of Vienna on Thanksgiving Day, OPEC members…
When I last analyzed Ecolab (ECL), the company had just come off strong 3rd quarter results with EPS up 16%. Ecolab is a global leader in energy, water, and hygiene services. The company has a market cap of $34 billion and is the largest publicly traded company in the Cleaning Products industry. The company has increased its dividend payments…
It’s in a risk ‘OFF’ alignment with all durations dropping but the curve rising. 10, 5 & 2 year yields from Bloomberg Meanwhile, here’s the chart of the 30 vs. the 5 year spread. Obviously risk is in a downtrend bigger picture, but it is a little bouncy today… Click on picture to enlarge While other…
Source The ECB is freaking out and ran out of ideas to stimulate the economic activity in the Eurozone as the inflation rate is reaching alarmingly low levels. ECB President Draghi’s main fear is that because the inflation is expected to be low, it will remain low. It doesn’t happen very often that a president…
US equities were a bit off today, and volatility was ticking higher, as markets were open for a half day of light holiday trading. Thus ended the amazing streak of new highs, at least for today. There was no significant economic news released. Have a pleasant weekend.
Despite the best efforts of business media to paint a rosy picture of the Black Friday spend-fest, stocks had only one trajectory – from upper left to lower right – from the open. Small Caps were slammed but all major indices gave up significant knee-jerk “energy schmenergy” gains to close ugly. However, The Dow was pushed just…
Cola giant, The Coca-Cola Company (KO – Analyst Report) recently entered into an agreement with SABMiller plc (SAB.L) and Gutsche Family Investments, to merge their bottling operations in Southern and East Africa to form the largest Coca-Cola bottling entity in the continent- Coca-Cola Beverages Africa. SABMiller plc is one of the largest bottler of Coca-Cola drinks. On the other…
It’s a monthly chart and these guys move like molasses on a cold winter day. But we might wonder how long it may take for the stock market’s loss of leadership to manifest in some problems. The chart is untouched and unchanged in status since it was produced a few months ago. So for bulls…
We all more or less know what is going on in the world right now. There is the political turmoil between Ukraine and Russia, the fear surrounding the deadly Ebola virus, and the actions of the terrorist group ISIS are being monitored closely. Often, as an investor or trader, we do not take these conflicts…
This Great Graphic, composed on Bloomberg, shows that China’s market capitalization (white line) is greater than Japan’s (yellow line). This is the consequence of two forces. Click on picture to enlarge First, the Chinese stock market has easily outperformed Japanese stocks this year, and by a wide margin. The Shanghai Composite is advanced 26.8% this year and…
