This will be very much highlights and on point.  Because I’ve been up since 2 AM writing next week’s Peoplenomics report as pieces of the Four Track Human model continue to fall into place. Focus in ShopTalk Sunday will be “Yard and Garden Engineering” which is where systems thinking and calorie-quest collide with a side of … Read More

There are enough moving pieces today that a simple listing on the whiteboard should keep you “in  the game.”  But, speaking of “games” let’s play… Breaking and Broken: GDP: “Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025 (October, November, and December), according to the … Read More

So yes, there’s a lot of reading today — close to a hundred pages between the ChartPack and the Focus — but that’s because the times are not simple, even if the headlines want to pretend they are. If you want the fast-food version of reality, the free web is full of it. If you … Read More

Breaking or Broken?  Durable Goods Just out: New Orders New orders for manufactured durable goods in February, down four of the last five months, decreased $4.4 billion or 1.4 percent to $315.5 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This followed a 0.5 percent January decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.8 percent. Excluding defense, … Read More

Most of Easter – except for the scrubbing part which we’ll get to – was spent in this week’s Peoplenomics report.  Which turned into a 46-page marvel of Depression research, how times have changed, and what “everything breaking at once” could look like. I’m exhausted. Since I promised to have shorter reports, let’s just hit the … Read More

Ah, the glory of an  Easter Sunday, huh? I like getting a bit of down time. (Actually slept in until 4:46 AM!) Except, as you might expect, my idea of down time is a little rough around the edges. Mainly, it means a change from head work to thing work. The workaholism never changes – … Read More

This holiday Peoplenomics report begins with the new ChartPack and a simple but important point: market risk has shifted. The immediate focus is next week’s trading setup, but the larger question is even more important — what do the next six months, the next year, and even the next decade begin to look like if … Read More

The Gospel of BLS hath been spoke: Both the unemployment rate, at 4.3 percent, and the number of unemployed people, at 7.2 million, changed little in March. These measures also changed little over the year. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for people who are Asian (3.7 percent) decreased in March. The jobless … Read More

There will be a “quickie” post later on – when the job numbers roll this morning. But with the stock market closed – and tension building to the “Which Way Chicane” come Monday, I think it’s a dandy time to wander into dreamland. The place where we all go to make magic.  The shop. Because – … Read More

After expressing my outlook – that only a fool would hold a long market position over the three day Easter stock market break beginning from today’s close – I waded into the deep end of the pool again.  With one of those high-leveraged option plays that can work out nicely. Trump & the Dancing Titanic … Read More

Markets may be smiling this morning, but under the hood the story is far from settled. A modest bump in private-sector jobs has futures pointing higher, yet the bigger question is whether this rally has legs—or is simply marking time ahead of more serious data later in the week. With key labor numbers still to … Read More

Just out from S&P: Year-Over-Year The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions,reported a 0.9% annual gain in January, down from a 1.1% rise in the previous month. The 10-City Composite saw an annualincrease of 1.7%, down from a 2.0% increase in the previous month. The 20-City … Read More