Bloomberg – Single-Family Housing Starts in U.S. Rise Along With Permits Groundbreaking for single-family homes climbed in October and permits for all future projects reached a six-year high to signal construction will add to U.S. economic growth in early 2015. Starts of one-family houses advanced 4.2 percent to a 696,000 annualized rate last month, the… Continue reading The Recovery In Housing
The Wall Street Journal – For Some Stock Pickers, Worst Showing in 10 Years The pain keeps getting worse for stock pickers. Just 18% of portfolio managers who focus on large-capitalization stocks are beating their benchmarks so far this year, according to research by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. That’s the worst showing for large-cap… Continue reading Stock Market Correlation
Charts of the Week Topics Covered This Week Include: Japan’s Economy Continues To Weaken Earnings And Revenue Beat Rate Earnings And Revenue Expectations Company Guidance Is $39 A Month A Game Changer For The U.S. Consumer? Gas Prices Volume Why Is Economic Volatility Disappearing? Consumer Confidence Reflects Stock Returns Inflation Expectations Big Year For Large… Continue reading Charts of the Week
Reuters – Senate narrowly fails to pass Keystone XL pipeline bill The U.S. Senate on Tuesday narrowly failed to pass a bill that would have approved construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, rejecting a measure the House of Representatives approved last week. The vote count was 59-41 in favor, but 60 “ayes” would have… Continue reading Keystone Vote Comes Up Short
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – Lower oil prices cut two ways for US economy The shale oil revolution means that the US is no longer just the world’s top oil consumer – and thus a beneficiary of falling prices – but the top producer as well. Now when West Texas… Continue reading Oil Supply & Demand
The Financial Times – No easy options for Opec over oil slide The tension has been palpable in the lead-up to next week’s Opec gathering in Vienna. As the oil price has languished at four-year lows, a flurry of diplomatic missions between some of the cartel’s members has taken place. Signalling through public statements and… Continue reading How Will OPEC Respond To Lower Prices?
The Wall Street Journal – 5 Things to Watch in the Fed’s October Minutes When Federal Reserve officials last met on Oct. 28-29, they brought their latest bond-buying program to an end. In the months ahead, they must decide when to begin raising their benchmark short-term interest rate, which has been pinned near zero since… Continue reading FOMC Minutes To Be Released Today
Cornerstone Macro – How Can Market Returns Be Gangbusters If EPS Growth Isn’t ?! Analyst price targets continue to be too tied to just the income statement. As I will show in the last chart, EPS growth only explains about 20% of returns while P/E explains the majority. Historically analysts expect that EPS will explain… Continue reading EPS & Stock Returns
<Click on chart for larger image> MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – Sales Projections Are Dropping, and It’s Not Just Oil Third-quarter earnings season is essentially over. Once again, a familiar pattern has played out: Growth on the bottom line is good enough to mask weakness on the top line. But if one crop of estimates for… Continue reading Revenue Projections Falling
Real Time Economics (WSJ Blog) – Economists Call October Inflation Measure ‘Distorted,’ a ‘Statistical Quirk’ The Labor Department this year revamped its producer-price index to capture a wider swath of the economy. They succeeded, though perhaps a little too well. Up until December, PPI only reflected somewhat steady prices on goods. Now, the index also… Continue reading A Note On Seasonality In Yesterday’s PPI Number
The Financial Times – Martin Wolf: The curse of weak global demand How do we explain such weak demand, particularly in the eurozone and Japan? Only if we understand this do we have any hope of deciding on the right remedies. One can identify three sets of underlying explanations. The first set stresses the post-crisis… Continue reading Weak Global Demand