One of the hallmarks of a smoothly functioning ec0nomy is the efficient flow of capital to the most attractive opportunities. These can exist in stocks, bonds or direct investments. At other times nothing seems very attractive, either because it’s too risky or too pricey. That’s pretty much where we are today and it’s the mark of an …
A worrying economic question these days is the possibility of a return to negative GDP growth in the U.S, the dreaded double dip. If it happened it could pull much of the world back into recession, possibly triggering another round of financial crisis. Though all but a few consider this a low possibility, it’s not so low as to be off the …
Just when it seemed clear that the economy was settling into a big-time slowdown, along comes the ISM report with surprisingly good news. The ISM report captures manufacturing activity, and the fact that it was up–economists had expected a decline– sent Wednesday’s stock market on a tear (it helped too that China also reported upbeat …
The Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 different markets rose briskly in June, according to Standard & Poor’s. This may give a nice boost to the stock market but it’s a pretty meaningless statistic because the data is two months old. That puts it right at the tail end of the buying flurry that came with the Homebuyer Tax Credit. …
Are housing prices near a bottom? It’s not just policymakers, realtors and bankers who yearn for the turn. Anyone who owns a house, a condo or coop is surely wishing for some modest improvement. Not the least of these hopefuls is homeowner-in-chief Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who just this past Friday lamented …
Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke’s much anticipated speech to the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole conference was fairly vague about Fed’s future course—no surprise there— but was also quite frank about the fact that the economy appears more sluggish than it looked to be just a few months ago. This reality check comes on the same …
Notwithstanding Thursday’s slight improvement in weekly jobless claims, it’s been a pretty rough summer on the economic front. On Wednesday we learned that durable goods orders rose a tepid 0.3% for the month of July, less than economists had expected. On Tuesday, existing home sales tumbled 27%, much more than economists had expected, …
The world’s grown accustomed to bouncing from crisis to crisis, like passengers in a car where the transmission keeps slipping and the vehicle keeps jerking. One day it’s Greece, then Portugal, then US. debt, then the lack of jobs. You know the drill. The weird thing about this jerky ride is that what we face at each lurch is not a new …
There was a good day in the stock market on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 posting a solid 1.2% gain and the Dow rising a bit less at 1%. Bonds lost some ground due to stronger than expected economic reports. Note that I didn’t write “strong” economic reports because we certainly didn’t have that. Wholesale prices nudged up a bit (easing …
If you ask Americans today which they would like most, a promising stock or an ample bond yield, my guess is that the bond would win by a landslide. Even though inflation is not eating away at purchasing power, declining incomes are. What people are hoping for, hunting for, is that reliable investment that steadily kicks off cash…for …
On the beach, At the park? In the pool? Feel free to keep doing nothing because that’s exactly what the market is doing. But if you still want to sound as though you haven’t been away all summer, here are a few facts to throw around at this evening’s barbeque.
First, stocks are going nowhere. Yes, they are making lots of headlines,
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So it was a humdinger, after all. Friday morning’s GDP report, which is the first stab at estimating growth in the just completed second quarter of 2010, also provides some significant revisions to prior quarter growth estimates. The latter news is perhaps bigger than the 2nd quarter’s 2.4% gain—a bit below the consensus expectation of …
