The chart below is blurry, but it still gets the job done in terms of showing you the most important trend in the labor market. The chart shows the spread between those finding jobs ‘plentiful’ vs ‘hard to get’ according to FactSet. As you can see, the ratio is above the level prior to the
Stocks Rally Despite Headline Risk The stock market has been amazingly resilient in the past few days as the S P 500 is only down about 1.2% from the all-time high despite the increased threat of nuclear war with North Korea and the devastating storm in Texas which brought catastrophic flooding. It’
Hurricane Harvey To Have A Major Economic Impact The flood in Houston is going to be catastrophic to the city’s economy. Houston is the 4th largest city in America, so this will show up in the August and September economic data. Don’t get fooled by the theory that this will create more demand, makin
Global Dove Let’s look at the state of the global central banks. As you can see from the chart below, most central banks’ last action was to cut rates. That’s likely because in 2015-2016 the global economy was very weak as evidenced by the decline in trade. Trade has rebounded despite the risk of pr
Draghi Yellen Deliver Nothing Besides Yellen, Mario Draghi, the ECB president, spoke at the Jackson Hole event. There was some intrigue into whether he would give detail on the ECB’s bond buying program, but that will be pushed off into October as he didn’t give any monetary policy updates. The doll
In my last article, I discussed the possibilities of Yellen’s Friday speech at Jackson Hole. I was accurate in my expectation of what her speech would be on as the main point of her speech was to defend the regulations put in place since the last financial crisis. This was the speech of someone who
What Will Draghi Say? Yellen is speaking on Friday at 11AM. The same day, at 3PM, ECB chair Mario Draghi is speaking. There are conflicting reports about whether he will give new guidance about the tapering. I always thought he would give guidance in October or November because it’s closer to when t
The Dollar We don’t know for sure what caused the dollar’s weakness, but one aspect that is probably hurting the dollar is the accelerating growth in China, Japan, and Europe. Looking at future price performance, we must consider the possibility of a dollar rally. The chart below shows the speculati
The stock market sold off on Wednesday because of the threat President Trump made in his speech on Tuesday to shut the government down if he didn’t get funding for the southern border wall. This is in direct conflict with the Treasury Department which is asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling. Us
Tax Cut Talk Heats Up The rally in stocks on Tuesday was said to have been caused by the tax cut talk. The S P 500 rallied 0.99% and the Nasdaq rallied 1.36% as both inch closer to revoking the 2% selloff. I don’t know how much of the rally is about the tax cuts because
