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Sentiment on the part of small business owners declined in August, and based on the steep drop in interest rates and escalation of the trade war with China, you can't really blame business owners for becoming more cautious. Overall, the main index of sentiment dropped from 104.7 down to 103.1,...
The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index released on Tuesday morning was largely a positive report, in my view, with the Index reported at 103.1 but down 1.6 points. The Index level remains in the top 15% of readings for the Optimism Index. Where the report shows weakness, it is mostly in the ...
Introduction A few weeks ago, I wrote about the procession of data to watch in the event the inversion in the treasury yield curve were to lead to a producer-led recession. In this post, I consider the same procession as it might apply to a consumer-led recession. As I will argue in this pos...
It's useful to remember that long-term returns represent not only trough-to-peak advances, but peak-to-trough resolutions as well. Buy-and-hold investors don't get the trough-to-peak return. They get the full cycle return. Not surprisingly, the higher the valuation at the bull market peak, th...
In 2016, I first touched on the impacts of hiking the minimum wage. "What's the big 'hub-bub' over raising the minimum wage to $15/hr? After all, the last time the minimum wage was raised was in 2009. According to the April 2015, BLS report the numbers were quite underwhelming: '...
By Liz Ann Sonders I’ve been using the tail end of a Shakespeare quote to characterize the U.S. stock market’s behavior over the past 20 months or so: “... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Well, maybe not “nothing,” but not much either....
"There is a disconnect between the performance in stock market and the performance in many companies." – John Paulson Perhaps there's no better timing for the disconnect John Paulson refers. The S&P 500 ( SPY ) and Dow Jones Industrial Average ( DIA ) flirt with all-time hig...
Here's why - and how that's impacting truck makers. Orders for heavy trucks that haul part of the economy's goods across the US plunged by 80.1% in August 2019 compared to August last year, to about 10,400 orders, according to preliminary estimates by FTR Transportation Intelligence . It wa...
By Robert Eisenbeis, Ph.D. The FOMC decided to throw a pass by cutting rates; but given the market's response, it looks like they were tackled for a loss. In Woody Hayes' parlance, the one positive of a forward pass turned into a negative. Powell attempted to offer three justifications for...
By Noelle Corum, Associate Portfolio Manager , James Ong, Director, Derivative Portfolio Management , and Rob Waldner, CFA, Chief Strategist and Head of Multi-Sector Portfolio Management The Federal Reserve (Fed) cut rates by 0.25% for the first time in over a decade, 1 a move largely...