After hitting multi-decade highs in February, optimism on the part of small businesses pulled back a fair amount in March. While economists were expecting the headline index to see a slight pullback to 107.0 from last month’s reading of 107.6, the actual decline was much larger as the index dropped to 104.7. With a m/m…
According to a report by Statista, the global music streaming market is expected to grow from $11.44 billion in 2018 to $14.79 billion in 2022 at a CAGR of 6.6%. User penetration was at 24.7% in 2018 and is expected to grow to 26.6% by 2022. Earlier this month, streaming music service provider Spotify went public. Here…
Friday was hot and sponsored by the letter “P”. Payrolls were published and Powell made the first speech as the Fed Chair, pushing the price of gold to proliferate. What picture does it paint for gold? Payrolls Disappoint, But So What? U.S. nonfarm payrolls disappointed in March. The economy added only 103,000 jobs last month, according to…
Longfin Corp (NASDAQ: LFIN) Shares of Longfin Corp. were placed on a T12 halt on Friday after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a formal complaint against the company. A T12 halt requires a company that is listed on an American stock market to provide additional information concerning its activities. The regulator sued Longfin Corp. together with its…
I don’t know about you, but I love a good cryptocurrency note that finds analysts attempting to develop a model to value something that has no value. Bitcoin and its progeny are worthless. They have no intrinsic value and as Jack Bogle reminded investors last year, “Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return” and as such,…
Today’s release of the March Producer Price Index (PPI) for Final Demand came in at 0.3% month-over-month seasonally adjusted, up from last month’s 0.2%. It is at 3.0% year-over-year, up from 2.8% last month, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. Core Final Demand (less food and energy) also came in at 0.3% MoM, up from the…
In this past weekend’s newsletter, “Bulls Hang On By A Thread,” I suggested a rally was likely due to the short-term oversold conditions that currently existed. To wit: “For now, we want to give the bulls the benefit of the doubt, but that ‘bit of rope’ is awfully frayed at this juncture. If the market hits our target zone…
The chart above looks at performance numbers of several key indices on a Year-To-Date basis and from the highs in January. Both highlight that these indices are soft and mostly choppy so far this year. The 8-pack below looks numerous stock indices from large to small- Even though the majority of these indices are down this…
Today we’ll measure the current risk premium in the market. We’ll take a look at risk premium spreads and see how much longer this bull has to run. Make sure you review this video that explains risk premium spreads before continuing: Video length: 00:05:22 When the Fed lowers interest rates, it affects the risk premium…
After a relatively flat overnight session for the common currency, the EURUSD spiked as much as 50 pips higher after Reuters quoted ECB hawk Ewald Nowotny who this morning sounded especially hawkish, suggesting that the ECB could lift the deposit rate from -0.40% to -0.20% to start the process of rate hikes… ECB COULD LIFT…
