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Looking Ahead Of Wall Street: Urban Outfitters, Wal-Mart Stores, Hewlett-Packard Company, Intuit Inc.

Looking Ahead Of Wall Street: Urban Outfitters, Wal-Mart Stores, Hewlett-Packard Company, Intuit Inc.

Wall Street is heading towards the end of earnings season as four major companies are scheduled to release quarterly reports this week. What should investors look for in those reports? Urban Outfitters (NASDAQ: URBN): Urban Outfitters will announce its first quarter 2016 earnings results on Monday, May 18 after market close. The retailer is expected to […]
Homebuilder Sentiment Slides, Misses For 5th Of Last 6 Months

Homebuilder Sentiment Slides, Misses For 5th Of Last 6 Months

Since November, NAHB homebuilder sentiment has only beaten expectations once. May printed 54 (notably short of the 57 expectation). Despite all the previous hope for future sales, buyer traffic has fallen as The Midwest saw the biggest drop in sentiment (what about the post-weather bounce?) and The West rising modestly. The story was well-known: pessimism now offset […]
Monday Marketing – The Active Managers Strike Back

Monday Marketing – The Active Managers Strike Back

Active managers finally had a good quarter.   As you can see from the chart on the right, it was kind of a pathetic quarter with Actively Managed Funds (who research U.S. stocks before they buy or sell, as opposed to ETFs or other passive funds) outperforming by about 1%, but it’s the first time stock pickers beat […]
Endo International Enters Agreement To Buy Par Pharma For $8 Billion

Endo International Enters Agreement To Buy Par Pharma For $8 Billion

The pharmaceutical industry saw another M&A bump this morning when Endo International said it entered into an agreement to purchase Par Pharmaceuticals for $8.05 billion. Under the deal, shareholders of the private company, Par Pharmaceuticals, will receive $6.5 billion in cash and 18 million Endo International shares. The new company will be the fifth largest generic pharmaceutical […]
Stifel Nicolaus Bullish On Tesla Motors Inc.: Potential In Model X And Energy Storage

Stifel Nicolaus Bullish On Tesla Motors Inc.: Potential In Model X And Energy Storage

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) investors and analysts are still talking about the upcoming Model X and Model 3 even after earnings were released earlier this month. On May 15, analyst James Albertine of Stifel Nicolaus reiterated a Buy rating on TSLA with a $400 price target. Shares last closed at $244. Tesla’s Model X is scheduled to be released […]
Treasury Snapshot: With Equities At Record Highs, Where Are Treasuries? – May 18, 2015

Treasury Snapshot: With Equities At Record Highs, Where Are Treasuries? – May 18, 2015

With the S&P 500 hitting new highs on Thursday and Friday last week, let’s take a look at Treasury Yields.The first chart shows the daily performance of several Treasuries and the Fed Funds Rate (FFR) since 2007. The source for the yields is the Daily Treasury Yield Curve Rates from the US Department of the Treasury and […]
US Housing Starts: April 2015 Preview

US Housing Starts: April 2015 Preview

Housing starts are expected to total 949,000 units (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in tomorrow’s update for April, according to The Capital Spectator’s median point forecast for several econometric estimates. The projection represents a moderate gain in residential construction vs. March. Three estimates based on recent surveys of economists anticipate a substantially bigger increase in housing […]
Here Is How US Public Corporations Have Treated US Workers In The Last 15 Years…

Here Is How US Public Corporations Have Treated US Workers In The Last 15 Years…

The technical term is “structural unemployment” for what has happened to the middle class in the US. The reality is that US corporations have focused largely on their profits at the expense of their workers (jobs and income) through outsourcing, technology, and financialization (buybacks). The obsession with profits has doing more than push their stock […]
Gold Hits 3-Month Highs Amid “Frenetic Liquidity”

Gold Hits 3-Month Highs Amid “Frenetic Liquidity”

Gold topped $1230 this morning – breaking to 3-month highs and up over 4% year-to-date – up 5 days in a row for the best run in 4 months. The surge comes causally or correlatedly coincidental with China’s explicit shift into extraordinary measures (LTROs) but, as The FT reports, market participants are concerned that algo-based funds have created […]
Bonds, USD, Euro

Bonds, USD, Euro

Treasury yields are rising with the spread between the 10’s and 2’s also rising.  That continues the recent short-term trend. The longer this keeps up the closer we’d get to being able to declare a new trend and… a new macro backdrop. The Investing.com graphic also includes the 10 year Treasury Note and some Euro/UK bonds. The […]