Breaking: Durable Orders Crumble From the press release: “New orders for manufactured durable goods in November decreased $5.0 billion or 2.0 percent to $242.6 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This decrease, down two of the last three months, followed a 0.2 percent October increase. Excluding transportation, new orders were virtually unchanged. Excluding defense, … Read More
The mind of the public is not on eartth-shaking economic news. Evidenced by the top six searches on Google in the past day have been football-related. So being out of touch, and a bit greedier, we’ll begin with the NY Fed Empire State Manufacturing outlook: “The headline general business conditions index held steady at 3.5. … Read More
Hey there, Big Spender. This is your day! (Or, is it?) Since this is a half-day in the markets and since nothing much in government is moving, why not spend some time on spending? Besides, we’re all sick-to-death of political BS. So how about we pencil-out a rational approach to this Black Friday thing? Seems … Read More
If you don’t have enough to be thankful for this Thanksgiving…Be thankful THIS Market hasn’t fallen apart – yet: The usual caveats: The markets were “normed” in this view to January 1, 2000. Plus, this is our own Aggregate Index which is based on the idea of equal dollar allocations into the Dow, S&P 500, … Read More
Since we haven’t been invited over to your place for Thanksgiving, we will be spending most of the day in the studio here working on the “time machine” project. A bit of “personal woo” on that in a second. Since you won’t have Elaine or me sitting around to prompt you, here’s a short list … Read More
Breaking: Housing Data Low rates have set things ablaze: “Privately?owned housing units authorized by building permits in October were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,461,000. This is 5.0 percent (±1.7 percent) above the revised September rate of 1,391,000 and is 14.1 percent (±2.1 percent) above the October 2018 rate of 1,281,000.” T’ain’t Funny McGee Fibber McGee & Molly aide, T’ain’t nothing funny, anymore. Even the late-night clips I’ve been through have run out of left-wing slurs on Orange Man. So much so, in fact, that recently Bill Maher seemed to be almost (can … Read More
Sure, market futures are up – over a hundred on the Dow – and we continue in “major blow-off mode” for possibly until January, by the look of things. Holidays, with the exception of last Christmas’ slaughter of the elves, are normally a time of rising spirits. Yet with all the trade hype making the … Read More
Necklines and Slashers for Halloween breakfast. Not normally the kind of article we’d put out on the non-subscriber site, but since we won’t be doing a subscriber column until Saturday, we need to talk. Now. Wednesday, the market did the expected (though we wished they’d been more foresightful) and lowered their rate a quarter point. … Read More
Our first conversation tidbit today is really a lot more interesting than the run-of-the-mill, daily installment of political chicanery and spin by the co-opted corporate media. We prefer to study real data which suggests that yes, there really is reason for concern about the near-term future of the economy. Besides market futures being not-far from flat … Read More
House democrats are “Taking America Argentina.” A not-too-obscure (we hope) reference to the roll of Death Squads in places long ago and far away like Argentina. As Wikipedia explains them: “A death squad is an armed group that conducts extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances of persons for the purposes such as political repression, assassinations, torture, genocide, … Read More
The Jobs Report in a second. This is more important, I think…and we will have more detailed view this weekend for our Peoplenomics.com subscribers. Question is “When does a crash begin?” Our Aggregate Market view looked like this at 6:15 AM Central today: If this outcome is going to happen, our research projects the washout … Read More
1. Does Dorian Jump? That is the big questions everyone in Florida is asking. Here’s the latest projection for our cone-heads: Elaine and I have cancelled plans to go wind surfing Lake Okachobee this weekend. Gotta slow down when you get older,.. you know…we’ll leave those kind of things to the “Likes-deficient” on FB. As … Read More
President Trump is barking up the wrong tree in calling for the Fed to lower rates a full 1%. This morning, therefore, a short discussion of how and why he’s wrong and what it means on what could be a “Turnaround Tuesday” to the downside, if animal spirits of markets should turn today. In the … Read More