Bloomberg.com – Consumer Comfort in U.S. Improves to Highest Level Since April Confidence among U.S. consumers climbed for a sixth straight week to the highest level since April as a rally in stock prices and improving job market boosted Americans’ view of their finances. The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index advanced to minus 31.6 in the… Continue reading Consumer Confidence
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – S&P 500 Takes Its Own Shot Investors extended the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s record-breaking rally to 10 days and took the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index to the brink of its own all-time high. The Dow industrials rode good news in the labor market… Continue reading The S&P 500 Closes In On Record Territory
Reuters.com – COLUMN – Don’t worry about a stock market drop A feeling of vertigo may seem natural as Wall Street approaches a record and stock markets around the world climb to their highest levels since 2007. With the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index now only 0.5 percent away from its 2007 high of 1565… Continue reading When Will We See A Stock Market Correction?
Bloomberg.com – JPMorgan Sees Home Prices Up 14% as BofA Touts Party Ben S. Bernanke’s efforts to revive housing are making real estate bulls even more bullish. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) more than doubled its forecast for U.S. home price gains in 2013 to 7 percent this week, and predicts a more than 14… Continue reading Home Prices
The Financial Times – Investors pile into Peanuts and pizza In their never-ending search for bonds that pay more than a pittance in interest, investors are seeking out some of the world’s most exotic securities: investments built out of freight containers, cell phone towers, timeshare holiday homes, pizza restaurant profits, and even Charlie Brown merchandise.… Continue reading Investors Seek Out Exotic Securities
Bloomberg.com – JPMorgan Report Piles Pressure on Dimon in Too-Big Debate JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s efforts to hide trading losses, outlined in a Senate report yesterday, may ignite debate over whether the largest U.S. bank is too big to manage and ratchet up pressure on Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon to surrender his role… Continue reading Jamie Dimon And Big Banks
CNBC – Dow Posts Another Record High, Logs First 9-Day Win Streak Since November 1996 Stocks eked out a small gain in tight trading Wednesday, with the Dow logging its first ninth-consecutive winning streak since November 1996 and the S&P 500 within striking distance of its all-time closing high. “It’s the ongoing momentum in the… Continue reading Nine Day Win Streak For The Dow
Comment Below are our weekly mutual fund flow charts which were updated last night with data through March 6, 2013. Domestic equities posted another outflow last week while total equity flows and total bond flows both increased. <Click on chart for larger image> <Click on chart for larger image>
The Wall Street Journal – The Almighty Dollar Is Back After months in decline, the U.S. dollar is powering higher against the world’s major currencies, a reversal driven by the relative health of the U.S. economy that has strengthened the greenback’s role at the center of the global financial system. The WSJ Dollar Index, a… Continue reading The Strong U.S. Dollar
MarketWatch.com – U.S. economic growth is stronger than you think The U.S. economy is being seriously underestimated. In early January I predicted that U.S. growth of 2.25% to 2.5% this year, and a wave of skeptical comments ensued. The current consensus growth forecast of around 1.8% is actually being reduced, to around 1.5% or lower,… Continue reading The U.S. Economy
The Financial Times – The Fed’s balance sheet and an expert commentary problem I’m just using this disagreement to say something about how commentary from social scientists and other experts often gets disseminated in the media. Both here and in an earlier article, Blinder doesn’t seem to have really grappled with a topic (interest on… Continue reading Who Are The Experts?