Finance

Is The Stock Market Cheap? – Monday, April 2

Here is the latest update of a popular market valuation method using the most recent Standard & Poor’s “as reported” earnings and earnings estimates and the index monthly average of daily closes for the past month. For the earnings, see the table below created from Standard & Poor’s latest earnings spreadsheet. TTM P/E ratio =…

Chart Of The Week: Gold And Real Yields

This week it’s gold and real yields. A really important thing happened with interest rates in November last year which should be front of mind for investors thinking about gold. It is a reasonably well established understanding that gold prices trade inversely to real yields, and I’ll explain why shortly. What happened in November last year…

March 2018 Manufacturing Survey Growth Little Changed

Written by Steven Hansen The ISM Manufacturing survey insignificantly declined and remained in expansion. The key internals are in expansion. The Markit PMI manufacturing Index is in positive territory and insignificantly improved. Analyst Opinion of the ISM Manufacturing Survey Based on these surveys and the district Federal Reserve Surveys, one would expect the Fed’s Industrial Production…

College Students Could Be Hit Hard By The Next Bitcoin Market Cra

iStock/Oksana_Bondar Apparently SAT tests, which are like IQ tests in principle, don’t account for excessive risk taking. Where’s the evidence for this? Cryptocurrencies offer a hint. You see, over the past few months, more than one-fifth of American college students have invested their student loans in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. The bitcoin market is heading for…

Yield Curve Targeting

One of the biggest stories in finance and economics in 2018 is the flattening yield curve. It has been flattening for a few years, but now it is coming close to an inversion as we have detailed previously. The latest difference between the 10-year treasury yield and the 2-year treasury yield is only 47 basis points….

Weekly Technical Perspective On S&P 500, AUD/USD And AUD/JPY

SPX500 WEEKLY PRICE CHART Notes: Simplicity is key- Last month we highlighted key support in the S&P 500 at the, “confluence of the 61.8% extension and the 200-day moving average around 2586/90.” A sliding parallel (red) of the dominant slope (blue) extending off the November 2016 lows also converges on this region and further highlights the technical significance of…