ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
“Collateral Damaged: The Marketing of Consumer Debt to America” by Charles R. Geisst is a detailed and captivating examination of the history and growth of consumer debt in America. The book scrutinizes the political, cultural, social, and financial forces that converged to inflate America’s tremendous bubble in consumer credit. Geisst reaches all the way back … Read more
In her Nightly Business Report blog, Terri Cullen summarizes the potential economic impact of Toyota’s problems in “Toyota Recalls and the Economy.” In this article, Cullens suggests that what is bad for Toyota (TM) might be good for the U.S.: “The Toyota recalls may turn out to have a positive impact on the U.S. auto … Read more
Major resistance has broken and trends are turning back up on the major indices, so it is time to consider more seriously the prospect of the market printing fresh highs on the year sooner than later. Yesterday, I examined Cummins (CMI) as one of several stocks that may indicate the market has sufficient buying power … Read more
“The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” (Proverbs 22:7, New International Version) This proverb is understood all too well by anyone who has become impoverished by severe indebtedness. I thought of this proverb as I read a Reuters article titled “Eurozone gives Greece 30 days to show good … Read more
As fears quickly rise that President Obama wants to wipe out American business and kill the stock market (as some like Jim Cramer would have you believe), I took a trip down memory lane to watch Obama’s (now forgotten?) famous call to buy the stock market right around the March bottom: Less than 12 months … Read more
U.S. unemployment rates may have finally peaked last month, but the economic woes for many Americans are likely to continue for some time. For example, we learned this week that nearly 1 out of every 8 Americans uses food stamps. Yesterday, the Georgia Department of Labor reminded us of the severity of the unemployment situation … Read more
Good (or not as bad as expected) economic news has typically garnered selling in the U.S. dollar and buying in the stock market. On Friday, the good news that November’s monthly change in U.S. non-farm payrolls came in essentially flat sent the S&P 500 soaring as high as 1.7%. However, the dollar index also soared, … Read more
Now that major markets worldwide have completely recovered from the Dubai debacle of last week, it is easy to consider this episode just another blip on the way to eternal bliss. Not even the U.S. dollar could sustain more than a mirage of strength on this “temporary crisis” (I had thought that even after the … Read more
In “Market Cheers Over Ugly GDP Report“, Mike “Mish” Shedlock breaks down the components of the Q3 GDP numbers and laments that “I am struggling to understand what is surprising other than how bad this all looks once you break down the numbers.” The surprise was that the annualized GDP of 3.5% was a smidge … Read more
Once again, I am left wondering why another poor jobs report has supposedly caught the market and pundits by surprise. Those of us on the ground, and not just generating models, know and understand the ugliness of the job situation and see how it continues to worsen, not improve. We remain on schedule to hit … Read more