This never grows old. The BLS and the MSM are touting the phenomenal job gains over the last two months. They love to shout the figures from their one survey, while ignoring the data from the more comprehensive household survey. So here is what they are screaming from the mountaintops: November New Jobs – 353,000…
Well, it has been an interesting start to a New Year. As I penned yesterday: “Since the end of the Federal Reserve’s latest QE program, market volatility has picked up markedly. Since October, as QE came to its final bond buying conclusion, the drain of liquidity begin to financial market activity. As shown in the chart…
The headlines say wholesale sales declined and inventories grew. This data series is very noisy, and continues on a roller coaster of good and bad data. Because of this noise, the best way to look at this series may be the unadjusted data three month rolling averages which decelerated for the fourth month in a…
Shares of the home-furnishing retailer Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (BBBY – Analyst Report) fell 3.5% in yesterday’s after-hour trading session, owing to lower-than-expected sales results for third-quarter fiscal 2014. Bed Bath & Beyond’s third-quarter earnings of $1.19 per share were in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.19 per share and within the company’s guidance range of…
As you review your annual statement for 2014, you may notice it was a great year for US stocks. The S&P 500 climbed 14%, the Dow was up 13.7%, but when you look at your overall return you see results equal to or lower than the US market performance. Both results could lead to flawed…
Never mind that the US increased employment by 252,000 in December and unemployment sagged to 5.6%. The stock market moves to its own beat and doesn’t care much about the particulars in the ‘Jobs’ report or the media’s interpretations of its details. US Stocks Decline as Wage Data Overshadows Job Gains The market only cares…
Click on picture to enlarge GDX & GDXJ created bullish falling wedges at falling channel support, which was a nice pattern to see. Two-thirds of a time this pattern leads to rising prices. When the falling wedge takes place at channel support, odds are even higher, that upside price action take place. I like what…
CNBC spoke with Chicago Fed President Charles Evans this morning about the Federal Reserve’s schedule for raising interest rates above zero percent. While Evans confirmed the official narrative that the United States economy is getting better and better, he still doesn’t think the Fed will raise rates until 2016. Even the CNBC anchors seem to be…
I gave my thoughts on Robo-Advisors to Joanne Cleaver, writing for U.S. News and World Reports: “Robo-advisors are to investment advisors what TurboTax is to tax preparers,” says Charles Sizemore, founder of Sizemore Capital Management LLC in Dallas. “If you have a complex situation, TurboTax won’t help you. If you have a complex situation, the more…
Initial Reaction The big surprise in this month’s report was a decline in average hourly earnings. Details below. For the second straight month there has been a huge discrepancy between the household survey employment and the establishment jobs survey. Swings in household survey employment and the labor force have been wild lately. Last month household…
