Next week, the market could be exciting, maybe too exciting! As I’ve been predicting all year, the market will begin to rally when the election outcome comes into focus. I expected that in October and was pleasantly surprised when it started in September. Historically, the market likes gridlock, which appears to the outlook. Another reason for the recent rally is the expectation that the Fed…
Economists get ridiculed frequently and richly deserve it. In fact, they usually enjoy it! However, today was a good day, in that they accurately predicted the GDP growth rate in Q3 would be 2.0%, compared to 1.7% in Q2. This makes it even less likely we will see a “double-dip” or experience the worst of the recession again. This makes my forecast of a “long,…
Of all the many market indicators, this is the most useless but must be fun, as it rolls out year after year. Here it is: Since 1950, the stock market performs best from the last trading day of October to the end of April. (Of course, there are always obvious exceptions, like the oil embargo of 1973-74, the dot com bust of 2001-2, and the…
When you look at a cake, you are seeing the end result of whatever ingredients went into it. The same is true when you look at the market. Instead of flour, butter, mix or whatever goes into a cake, information and expectations go into the market. Most people understand why information moves a market, but expectations about information are just as important. Yesterday’s roller-coaster market…
Arthur Conan Doyle once described how Sherlock Holmes unraveled a mystery because of the “dog that didn’t bark”. That’s reminds me of the G-20 meeting in Korea. China is clearly manipulating its currency, but so is the U.S. But, there was little furor about this. While the finance ministries are warning of a currency war, there was no furor that we were already in it.…
Yesterday, the Treasury Department issued $10 billion in five-year bonds. In other words, they borrowed another $10 billion. But, something was different . . . very different. Instead of repaying $10 billion at the end of five years PLUS interest earned by the bond-holder, the government will repay $10 billion LESS interest paid to the government for holding the money. This has never happened before!…
One of the benefits of aging is that a person has had time to benefit from all the good advice they have received over the years. One of the disadvantages is that you cannot remember who gave you the advice . . . Some of the best advice I received as a young investment advisor was to be an “economics agnostic and a political atheist”.…
With regret, I have noticed my blog gets neglected whenever I finish doing my quarterly column for Inside Business. (You can receive copies by email at no cost by signing up at www.baycapitaladvice.com.) To be even more confessional, I have also been working on a book, which is still another excuse for my keyboard burnout. No more excuses, just apologies! With the highly important G-20…
The famous fat lady sang this morning, and, thankfully, didn’t sing anything surprising. The rate of unemployment remained constant at 9.6%, instead of increasing to 9.7% as expected. Total non-farm jobs decreased by 95 thousand, far better than the 600-700 thousand monthly decreases we saw last year but way below the 250 thousand a month increases that we need. Tragically, 6.1 MILLION people have been…
She will sing this Friday morning, when the monthly Civilian Unemployement Report or “Jobs Report” will be released. To the market, this is the single most important economic report each month, probably too important. But, it is even more important this month. Yesterday, the Non-Manufacturing ISM Report indicated there was more job growth in the services sector than expected. As a result, the Dow roared…
For years, economists and financial analysts have talked about the BRIC countries, i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, and China. As a group, they were rapidly growing economies dependent upon export growth. As a group, they need to curb their internal savings by individuals and increase consumption spending by those individuals. This is a happy problem. Now, economists and financial analysts are talking about the HIIC countries,…