One day it’s fear and loathing, the next it’s hope springs eternal. We live these days with the stock market acting as a manic depressive. That’s nothing new,of course, as Warren Buffett has long characterized the equity market is such colorful terms. But lately it seems even more so, a fact made painfully clear by the rising VIX and by …
There was a bumper crop of information and comment on the economy today. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke testified before the House Budget Committee and the Fed also released its Beige Book, which contains reports from the Federal Reserve’s district banks. On balance, the economy continues trudging through the great deleveraging, …
With anxiety mounting about Europe’s debt crisis, China’s growth, and renewed talk of a double dip recession in the U.S., the stock market is losing steam. As the Dow dips below 10,000, buyers are not charging in to scoop up values, leading many to ask whether market’s weakness reflects mere worry or is the accurate refection of a …
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) report released today bodes well for economic growth in the months ahead, but it may also hold bad news for frugal shoppers. Not only did manfacturing increase at a healthy rate for the 10th consecutive month in May, it did so expansively. According to Norbert J. Ore of the Institute for Supply …
The weakness of the U.S. stock market over the past week reflects investor uncertainty over how to process each new chapter in Europe’s debt crisis. Contagion is a big worry, and some even mention the USA as a possible domino given its big debt load. The more immediate concern, though, is a collapsing euro, a risk driven home again on …
The U.S. economy continues to improve, yet it is so tentative that we look for reassurances in all the tea leaves. Thursday brought us the weekly jobless report; Friday it will rain tea leaves when we get retail sales, industrial production, consumer sentiment and business inventories. Not much in any of this will make or break the …
What do we make of a market that ignores good news? That’s what the Dow appeared to do Friday. After starting the day on a positive note, the April jobs report showing that payrolls grew by 290,000, the market turned negative within an hour and spent most of the day in the red. For the full trading session, the broad indexes were all …
One month of jobs numbers tells us very little about the economy’s direction. But with the April jobs numbers released Friday morning we have back to back months of powerful gains. The Labor Department reports that April job growth was 290,000. The original number for the month of March had been 162,000 jobs gained; it was revised up to …
The stock market sent shock waves through the world economy on Wednesday, falling nearly 1000 points in the early afternoon in a spastic move that was partly reversed within an hour or so of the initial drop. Most startling, seven hundred points of the drop happened in just 15 minutes, leading many to conclude that high frequency …
There’s updated data on the cost to taxpayers of the Homebuyer Tax Credit, which expired at the end of April. The U.S. Treasury reports that through March 27 some 2.2 million people had filed for the credit and the cost to the Treasury was nearly $16 billion. That’s up from 1.8 million filers through late February at a cost to Treasury …
Shaken by the prospect that the Greece rescue package might not be enough, and worried about Euro contagion as new concerns arose over Spain, investors sent the Dow down more than 245 points on Tuesday. The decline was spread across every major sector; overall, 96% of stocks took a tumble. The Nasdaq took an even steeper drop, falling …
With so many new economic crosscurrents to consider, it’s good to know where the big dogs– hedge funds–are hunting these days. Do they think the European Union can pull a rabbit from the hat and save Greece? Do they think the U.S. economic reports (a hundred visions and revisions) are credible? Are they worried about inflation, or …
