Copper Is The One Metal You Can’t Ignore
The price of copper is at its highest point since 2014. The red metal’s price rose from the latter part of 2016 and all of 2017. You can see what I mean from the chart below: The shift to electric vehicles will be a major driver of this trend going forward. According to Reuters, an industry […]
EUR/USD – Will Resistances Stop Currency Bulls?
Earlier today, EUR/USD increased sharply, increasing to the resistance area created by two important resistances. Will they stop currency bulls and trigger one more move to the downside in the following days? EUR/USD The overall situation in the long- and medium-term hasn’t changed much and we’ll focus on the very short-term changes today. The first […]
The Fed Still Follows The Market On Rates
We need to put to bed once and for all the notion the Fed is ahead of things and set rates to lead the market. It simply follows the market’s lead… “Davidson” submits: This history will serve as a good example of how the Fed operates vs. what the Fed says it does. The Fed […]
Household Debt Reaches New Peak: A Very Deflationary Setup
Aggregate household debt balances rose by $116 billion in the third quarter of 2017. As of September 30, 2017, total household indebtedness was $12.96 trillion. This increase put overall household debt $280 billion above its 2008 Q3 peak, and 16.2 percent above the 2013 Q2 trough. Hooray! A New York Fed report on Household Debt and […]
Precious Metals: Patience Is Golden
Without growth in Western gold ETF holdings, the “decent but not spectacular” demand from China and India is not strong enough to move the gold price higher. The SPDR (GLD-NYSE) fund gold holdings currently sit at about 843 tonnes. There has been very little change in the total tonnage for several months. That’s neutral for the gold price. […]
Q3 Earnings Were Just Like The First Half
More On Q3 Earnings Not only are the percentage of companies reporting beats and the beat rate better than average, but also the percentage of companies issuing negative guidance is lower than average. 58 companies have issued negative guidance and 28 have issued positive guidance. Just like how companies usually beat estimates, most of the […]
Retail: The Perfect Buy For Christmas
It looks like the Great Mall-pocalypse of 2017 may have finally run its course. In particular, the “death of retail” is probably the most overwritten, overhyped story in the business universe. Apparently, by this time next year, the U.S. will be renamed the “United States of Amazon.” No one will ever go out to shop […]
U.S. Dollar Sell-Off Targets Initial Support
DXY Daily Chart Technical Outlook: We’ve been tracking a long-term slope line dating back to 2011 and in last week’s Technical Outlook, we highlighted the risk for a pullback while below this key threshold. The subsequent decline is now testing initial support at the 94-handle where basic channel support converges on the broader 23.6% retracement of the yearly […]
Regional Price Parities: Comparing Cost Of Living Across Cities And States
Many years ago I heard a story from a member of a committee of a midwestern university that was thinking about hiring a certain economist. The economist had an alternative offer from a southern California university that paid a couple of thousand dollars more in annual salary. The economist offered to come to the midwestern […]
October Producer Price Index: Final Demand Up 0.4% MoM
Today’s release of the October Producer Price Index (PPI) for Final Demand came in at 0.4% month-over-month seasonally adjusted, unchanged from last month’s 0.4%. It is at 2.8% year-over-year, up from 2.6% last month, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. Core Final Demand (less food and energy) also came in at 0.4% MoM, unchanged from the […]
