Retail Sales Down, January Sales Revised To -0.4%
There was a lot of cheering last month when retail sales rose by 0.2%. That cheering mostly vanished into thin air today when January retail sales were revised to -0.4% and February retail sales came in at an anemic -0.1%. Curiously Bloomberg Econoday said today’s report showed “respectable strength in February.” February retail sales were […]
Kasich Beats Trump On Economy
Markets pull back on news from the BOJ and Iran’s resistance to oil production cuts. January retail sales numbers are revised down. Economists prefer Kasich over Trump. Video Length: 00:12:54
A Slowdown In Stock Buybacks? Don’t Expect Institutional Buyers To Pick Up The Slack
According to FactSet, S&P 500 earnings will drop roughly 8.3% in the first quarter. That’ll mark the fourth consecutive quarter of declines in corporate profits-per-share. Why might that matter? There are only two occasions over the previous two decades where earnings contractions lasted longer. In both instances, the U.S. economy experienced a recession; in both instances, the S&P 500 […]
Brazil Currency, Stocks Tumble As Former President Lula Accepts Cabinet Position
Update: Confusion abounds as the government is now said to delay Lula’s appointment after Senator Delcidio Amaral’s plea bargain. According to Veja, Rousseff’s former chief of staff Aloizio Mercadante allegedly offered financial, political and legal aid in exchange for Amaral’s silence. Just yesterday, we showed you Brazil’s stagflationary nightmare in one simple chart. Here’s the amusing (or depressing, depending on if […]
El-Erian On Central Bank Ammo
Mohamed El-Erian gives a good review of the recent history of Central Bankers’ descent down the rabbit hole of unconventional monetary policies. A calm, rational man well worth a listen for gaining, maintaining and/or updating perspective. One thing I think the narrative omits, as with most mainstream financial intellectuals, is that the series of rolling […]
Australian Dividend Stocks In Focus
The Australian stock market is filled with dividend stocks with high yields and payout ratios. That’s because of differences in taxation that make dividend payments more appealing for Australian businesses than for United States businesses. The result is a country filled with businesses that reward shareholders with high dividend payments. This article takes a detailed […]
Short Setups Looking Nice…. Really Nice
Yeah, I know, the bulls, even with today’s weakness, still have a firm hold on this market. But there are some conditions underneath the surface that suggests conditions are weakening a bit. Look no further than the small caps which has led this market higher all along. Today they are hitting new low after new […]
FTSE 100: The Multi-Month Bearish Trend Has Slowed, But Is It Over?
It has almost been a year since the FTSE 100 peaked at 7128 on April 4, 2015. The index has since then given up 970 points or 13% from that high, with the only exception being that of February 5, whereby the index was down by 22.9% from its 2015 high. The drag on the index over the last […]
EC Earnings Expected To Decline For 5 Consecutive Quarters
Markets are forecasting mechanisms and they typically shift into a weak technical profile for a reason. One possible explanation for the concerning look of longer-term charts is a sharp drop in earnings expectations for U.S. companies. From Zack’s Investment Research: “We now have three quarters of back-to-back negative earnings growth and this picture isn’t expected to change in […]
The West Is “Copying Japan”: HSBC
When the Big Bank crime syndicate (and our puppet governments) announced all of their near-zero interest rates, and “quantitative easing” (i.e. monetizing debt) back at the beginning of 2009, all the central bankers and all the puppet-politicians smugly assured us that “they would NEVER COPY JAPAN.” Then, immediately, they continued to copy Japan — except to a greater […]
