Previous 10 | Next 10 |
Why do we care? The general description of the business cycle is that the economy expands until everyone who can be - or wishes to be - employed is. At which point, wages start to rise significantly. But we also, at the same time, get inflation, meaning that the Federal Reserve will raise in...
I must admit that it is somewhat hard to believe that a month has passed since May's disappointing jobs report and therefore the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released yet another report , this time for the month of June. In this case, we saw almost a complete reversal from last month's di...
Source: IBES by Refinitiv sector data Here is the historical EPS and revenue growth by sector for the S&P 500, which helps us compare and contrast what went on in late 2015, early 2016, with today's growth rates (or lack thereof). Expected revenue growth for Q2 '19 is still positive,...
First, a decline in manufacturing, and then a slump in service industries, now a broad-spectrum inversion of the yield curve hitting its most critical metric this week, unemployment finally starting to rise again, a one-year relentless housing decline across most of the nation and the world, c...
Dr. David Kelly and his team at JPMorgan put together - each quarter - one of the best capital market, economic and portfolio management summaries on the Street in the form of JPMorgan's "Guide to the Market". This valuation table is typically found in the first 10 pages of "The Guide". Here...
The market is making new all-time highs. Is this the final "Melt-Up" I've been anticipating? Or is it something more sustainable? Bull Case versus Bear Case The bulls have once again taken control of the direction of the market. Three new highs last week. We have to respect the determina...
As we rolled into the new quarter this week, the period for measuring the "forward 4-quarter estimate" rolled forward from Q2 '19 through Q1 '20, to Q3 '19 through Q2 '20. That means the "forward 4-quarter" estimate rolled from last week's $170.63 to this week's new $174.87, or an increase o...
Despite a stronger-than-expected June gain of 191K private nonfarm payrolls (+191K vs. +150K), private sector jobs growth - when measured over multi-month periods - has slowed from a December 2018 high of 2.3% to now as low as 1%. That's the weakest growth in over 8 years, but it's nothing to ...
Wall Street's fervent hopes and prayers for rate-cut ammo were not fulfilled. Wall Street, clamoring for three to four rate cuts this year, was hoping and praying fervently for a lousy jobs report that would "force" the Fed to cut rates. Those hopes and prayers were not fulfilled when the ...
It's never about a single payroll report. Even still, there's something significant in how the "good" ones aren't measuring up the way they used to. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics ((BLS)), the US economy gained 224k payrolls in the month of June 2019. Well above consensus, the hea...