Insights

The April newsletter is posted online. Click on Newsletter at the top of the page and click on the latest one. This is a forecast issue. I know most of them come out in January or December but I am publishing this at what I think is a significant turning point.

Last week may have marked an important top for the market. We have had a series of small 3-day corrections over the last month after having almost no setbacks during Jan and Feb. This pullback seems different and I think you can look for a pullback of around 10% in US...

Markets in Asia, Europe and Latin America mainly opened up lower today. Of those, only some European markets managed to finish with gains and they were small. U.S. stock indexes opened lower and finished about breakeven today. Our markets are closed tomorrow for Good...

How is the economy doing? In terms of simple growth the following chart may help. You can see the big drop during 2008-09, the tepid recovery of less than 4% growth, half of what past recoveries from sharp recessions have been, the dip and the recent recovery again....

Right now the U.S. federal government is borrowing about 40% of every dollar it spends. I have not heard much talk about this lately but it is deficit spending on a huge scale. I have written about the troubles that high debt levels have caused several European...

Well, just when you thought it was safe to go into the water . . . I believe that referred to the sequel to the movie Jaws. The original movie was released 37 years ago. We were just married and watched it just before heading to the beach. My wife never left the...

Smart Money Magazine Online did a different take on true employment using the Bureau of Labor Statistics own data. As regular readers know, the unemployment rate as it is reported is one of my pet peeves because it is misleading. Here's the chart. Click to enlarge....

Ben Bernanke said early today that the US economy badly needed growth in order to get the current high unemployment rate down. Markets took that as a sign he would be very accomodative and might even do a third round of quantitative easing. If you remember my...

I had been saying that we were due for a correction before long. We have gone up in a nearly unbroken advance dating back to mid-December. Three months is a long time and the Nasdaq gained nearly 20%. When an overbought condition meets bad news you have what we had...

Just before the close of trading, the S&P 500 index, the Nasdaq and the small stock indexes are pulling back from mid-day highs. Still, they should finish up on the day. Gold and oil are also up, 0.14% and 0.7% respectively. The dollar is sharly lower today. The...