Please Watch My New YouTube Video: Trend of the Week How Tired Is the Consumer?
Today I posted my two-hundred-and-forty-second YouTube video: Trend of the Week: How Tired Is the Consumer? This week’s Trend of the Week is How Tired Is the Consumer? Consumer spending makes up 70% of the economy, so if consumers get tired and start spending...
More evidence of a strong economy in latest retail sales report–I’m sure the Fed is paying attention
U.S. retail sales in January jumped by 3% in January from December, the Commerce Department reported today, February 15. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a 2% increase. Retail sales had dropped in December and November. Together with the strong job gains...
Microsoft reportedly plans to cut 11,000 jobs; this is a serious indicator for the economy
Granted these are all reports from outside news sources but there are a number of them. Where there’s smoke there might well be fire. U.K. broadcaster Sky News has reported that Microsoft plans to cut about 5% of its workforce or about 11,000 roles. Bloomberg...
Powell refused to rule out recession yesterday and today markets sell off
Yesterday, Fed chair Jerome Powell in his post-Fed-meeting press conference said that a recession in 2023 isn’t inevitable. Growth will stay positive next year, he continued, although “it’s not going to feel like a boom.” How much isn’t...
Please Watch My YouTube Video: Trend of the Week Housing Prices Fall, Finally
My one-hundred-and-ninety-first YouTube video: “Trend of the Week Housing Prices Fall, Finally” went up today. This week’s Trend of the Week is “Housing Prices Fall, Finally.” We’ve recently seen a big increase in mortgage rates,...
The U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% rate in the first quarter; stocks surge
The U.S. economy unexpectedly shrank at a 1.4% annualized rate in the first quarter of 2022, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday, April 28. The first quarter results follow on a 6.9% growth rate in the fourth quarter. Economists had projected a 1% rate...
Headed your way–a flood of numbers on the economy; here’s my preview
Data, data everywhere in the next two days. From inflation to GDP. To begin with the Bureau of Economic Analysis is scheduled to report first quarter U.S. GDP growth on April 28. Economists expect to see that the economy has grown at an annualized rate of just 1.1% in...
Economy adds 250,000 more jobs than expected in February, wage growth lags
The U.S. economy added 678,000 new jobs in February. That was the most new jobs since July. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected the economy to add 423,000 jobs in the month. The official unemployment rate fell to 3.8%. The U-6 unemployment rate, which...
Please watch my new YouTube Video: What if the Fed is Wrong?
I’m starting up my videos again–this time using YouTube as a platform. My ninety-third YouTube video “What if the Fed is wrong?” went up today. Please watch and subscribe to my YouTube channel. And like my video. Here’s the...
GDP growth in Q3 gets revised upward to 2.3% from 2.1%
It qualifies as good news certainly. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, as they say. But it’s not big good news. Real gross domestic product (that is after inflation) increased at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in the third quarter of 2021, the...
Today’s perfect storm batters stocks
It’s actually surprising that markets aren’t down more so far today. As of noon New York time, the Standard & Poor’s 500 is lower by 1.62% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 1.75%. The NASDAQ Composite has lost 1.65% and the NASDAQ 100...
Retail sales growth disappoints in November
Retail sales rose a scant 0.3% in November from October. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had forecast a 0.8% gain. And the November growth was a huge drop froth 1.7% month to month growth in September. On a year to year basis retail sales are up 18.2% from the...
Post-Pandemic-Stimulus “excess” savings look set to disappear for low income consumers in early 2022–that’s not a plus for U.S. economic growth
Lags are one of the toughest things to get right in figuring out how the economy operates and where it’s headed. For the last half of 2021 as the big Pandemic stimulus cash flows first fell and then dried up completely, economists have been looking for signs of...
Record 4.4 million U.S.workers quit their jobs in Sptember
A record 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in September. September’s “quit” numbers constituted 3% of the workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s up from the previous record set in August, when 4.3 million people quit their jobs —...
Is the Goldilocks market ready for challenges from the bears?
You can see yesterday’s stock rally and its continuation today as a return of the Goldilocks market. Yesterday, for example, inflation, if you look just at core inflation–that is without food and energy prices–looked strong enough to make the Federal...
Why financial markets didn’t believe today’s jobs number
Going into today’s September jobs report, the consensus speculation was that a print of fewer than 200,000 new jobs for the month had the potential to move the market because it would be weak enough to push the Federal Reserve into putting off its plans to begin...
Watch my new YouTube video: “The market’s big fear is the economy”
I’m starting up my videos again–this time using YouTube as a platform. My forty-ninth YouTube video “The market’s big fear is the economy” went up today. Please watch and subscribe to my YouTube channel. And like my video. You can see it...
Are airlines “the canary in the coal mine” for how much the Delta variant will slow the U.S. economy in the third quarter?
The politics and the science argue that this fall we’re not going to see a repeat of the economic lockdowns put in place in 2020 in an attempt to control the spread of the coronavirus. But it’s also clear that the the current huge surge in infections from...
Initial claims for unemployment even worse than expected as coronavirus shutdowns bite
For the week ended December 12, the number of Americans filing initial claims for unemployment in regular state programs rose on a seasonally adjusted basis to 885,000, an increase of 23,000 from the previous week. That was the largest gain in the last three months. A...
So why wasn’t the market more excited about the drop in new claims for unemployment?
Initial claims for unemployment in regular state programs fell by 75,000 to 712.000 for the week ended November 28. That was the first decline in new claims for unemployment in three weeks. And a big improvement over the 775,000 initial claims that economists had...
Merry Christmas! An unemployment cliff looms for 12 million workers on December 26
According to a report from the Century Foundation, 12 million Americans are set to lose unemployment insurance by the end of 2020 with the bulk of those 7.3 million set to lose their benefits on December 26. When Congress wrote its coronavirus rescue bills, it created...
Weekly new claims for unemployment dips–a bit
New claims for unemployment in regular state programs fell to 787,000 last week. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had been expecting 875,000 for the week ended October 17. The total showed a drop of 55,000 from the revised figure of 842,000 for the prior week. The...
So why was Friday’s jobs report for July so worrying?
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy added 1.8 million jobs in July. Not a bad number, on an absolute scale. 1.8 million jobs is a lot of jobs. And the total did beat economists’ expectations by about 300,000 jobs. But…...
ADP private payrolls report foreshadows negative government July jobs report due Friday
The ADP Research Institute report on private payrolls doesn’t always track with the government’s monthly jobs report, but the trends usually matches up. Which argues that Friday’s July jobs report will show that the economy and the labor market took...
PMI survey shows U.S. manufacturing remains barely above contraction in February; still better than China’s deep drop
The Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing fell to 50.1 in February, down from 50.9 in January. In this survey anything above 50 signals an expansion. The report was good news of a sort since U.S. manufacturing in...
Wall Street salivating over tomorrow’s official jobs report after strong ADP numbers
The ADP Research Institute report on private payrolls, released yesterday, showed a gain of 291,000 jobs in January. That blew away economist forecasts for 157,000 net new jobs in the month, according to Bloomberg’s survey of economists. The January gain would...
GDP up at 2.1% rate in 4th quarter but weakness emerges (or continues) in the numbers
The U.S. economy grew at a 2.1% annualized rate in the fourth quarter. That matches the growth rate for the third quarter and is slightly above the 2% growth predicted by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Full-year GDP growth finished at 2.3% in 2019, the lowest of...
U.S. economy adds 145,000 jobs in December, misses economist forecasts
The U.S. economy added 145,000 jobs in December That did set a record of 10 years of job growth for the economy. But the 145,000 job growth in December was below the 256,000 added in November and below the 160,000 expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. (I would...
U.S. service economy keeps roaring ahead in latest ISM survey
The U.S. manufacturing sector may be in deep and continued contraction, but according to the Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Non-manufacturing Index, the U.S. service sector–the bulk of the U.S. economy–hit a four-month high in...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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