The Big story of the Day is – at least in this pre-breakfast segment – the release of Consumer Prices, also commonly called “the inflation report.” The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.4 percent in February on a seasonally adjusted basis, after rising 0.3 percent in January, the U.S. Bureau of … Read More
BJL – The Big Job Lie first today. (This is nearly a Peoplenomics® length piece, so we can focus on just the charts on the subscriber side tomorrow…bring extra bean.) The well-controlled, agency-influenced corporate media’s take on the jobs report just out is based on what in the press release from Labor? Total nonfarm payroll employment … Read More
From this morning’s ECB meeting: 7 March 2024 The Governing Council today decided to keep the three key ECB interest rates unchanged. Since the last Governing Council meeting in January, inflation has declined further. In the latest ECB staff projections, inflation has been revised down, in particular for 2024 which mainly reflects a lower contribution … Read More
With Income Taxes filed, and part-way through updating our tree farm management plan, it’s comic relief to read the headlines and try to sense what could possibly be next. Very much like going to the circus (Ringling Brothers) as a kid. Except seems to have a lot more than three rings, peanut allergies, and that … Read More
It would take a supercomputer to model the contortions in financial markets today. Because while the early Futures were pointing to a Rocket Thursday moonshot, a more sober, inflation-adjusted view of Reality brings something else into focus. If I may? Hold the Phone: Cellular outages hit thousands in U.S., AT&T users most affected (cnbc.com) Statistically, … Read More
Now that I’m officially old – and the whole country took a day to mark the occasion – we can get on to the important business of doing??? Nothing. Yeah. This is one of those weeks when about the only thing to report on will be the “hatchet jobs” when political whozzits and whatzits will … Read More
In the back of my addled and aging brain, the notion that this is a Joe Harnell Market is being repeated. Over and over again. Fly Me to the Moon Bossa Nova. There’s no logic to what’s going on, unless you’ve studied previous financial stampedes. In which case, it fits a pattern. Bitcoin at $52,353.40 earlier, has … Read More
“OK, I’m capitulating on Bitcoin.” It was my consigliere calling on Wednesday to throw in the towel. This wizened old tax attorney had started the conversation by asking “Is this Uncle? Check Ure email. I send you and [redacted colleague] an explanation. I’m calling “Uncle.” Wholly without his consent, here’s what the email said: “OK … Read More
Welcome back to the poop deck of once Titanic America. Where the ship of state has been seriously holed, not by an iceberg, but excesses of Marxism and Monetarism. “If the right one don’t get’cha, then the left one will” sang Tennessee Ernie Ford. While loading 16-tons. Hot As Hell CPI “The Consumer Price Index … Read More
I said all of what I had to say (about mis-direction over actual Jobs data) in our Thursday column. As we expected, the Big Bouncy Thursday was a reasonable call. Which brings us to this morning’s coverage of the Bureau of Labor Statistics “offishul” jobs report. To make this easy for you to follow, we … Read More
Slow is good. OK, a little grating sometimes. But overall, slow is sometimes the best course. BBT (Big Bouncy Thursday) Big Bounce Thursday is our beginning example. The Dow sold off more than 300-points Wednesday. Mainly because the Federal Reserve didn’t cave-in to the habitual panhandlers on Wall Street who always want something (like a … Read More
Perhaps not to trigger the Fed, we found the wording of this morning’s S&P Case-Shiller Housing report interesting: NEW YORK, JANUARY 30, 2024: S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) today released the latest results for the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices. Data released today for November 2023 show that 12 … Read More
Our sense of the market this week is to be wary for a sell-off before the Fed Meeting results Wednesday. Especially if you have been following the CME Fed tool which is not particularly happy about the odds of a Fed move this week. There’s a ton of data this too, so a double-whammy on the … Read More