Latest data say China’s economy slowed in July
Reports released by China at 10 p.m. New York time Sunday show China’s economy slowing in July. Industrial output rose 6.4% year over year. Industrial output grew at an annual 7.6% in June. Economists had projected 7.1% growth in output. Retail sales, another...
Not a lot of conviction today: Markets refuse to bounce or to fall farther
Each rally today was greeted with selling. Every dip resulted in a recovery. U.S. equity markets refused to go much of anywhere today after yesterday’s big sell off. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, for example, finished the day up 0.13% at...
Inflation holds steady at annual 1.7% rate
The Consumer Price Index rose 0.1% in July from June. CPI headline inflation is now running at a 1.7% annual rate, below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2% inflation. The core inflation rate, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 0.1% in July and is also...
Market goes from worried to freaked out today
U.S. President Donald Trump threatening North Korea with fire and fury was certainly enough to worry global stock markets yesterday. Taunts from North Korea overnight and a promise from that country to drop four missiles into the waters off Guam sometime around the...
Good luck on getting that done: Debt ceiling truce looks to be over (if it ever really existed)
Back on August 2–you know, a week ago–it looked like, maybe, raising the debt ceiling wouldn’t be impossible after all. Sure time was short, very short. There were only 12 working days when both houses of Congress were in session before Treasury...
Haven assets in demand after day of heated rhetoric on North Korea and nukes
Not surprisingly haven assets such as gold and the Japanese yen are up today. So are volatility measures such as the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX.) Surprisingly, the rush to safety hasn’t been as strong as you might expect after a day when...
Sorry for the recent swings in the frequency of my daily posts
This is my first day in almost exactly a week without excruciating tooth pain. A week ago a neglected wisdom tooth finally yelled–Enough already! Â (It is my last wisdom tooth. When is evolution finally going to take care of this problem. And fix that appendix...
Why the huge intraday swing in stocks? The reason matters
At the end of the day, the move in the Standard & Poor’s 500 wasn’t all that large–just a drop of 0.24% to 2474.92. (Although these days, that’s a big decline for U.S. stocks. You have to go back to the beginning of July to find a bigger...
Chesapeake Energy beats and then shares drop–it’s tough being a natural gas stock right now
There’s really nothing wrong with Chesapeake Energy (CHK) that an increase in natural gas prices wouldn’t fix. Yesterday, August 3, Chesapeake reported second quarter earnings of 18 cents a share after subtracting one-time events. In the second quarter of...
Stronger than expected July jobs report doesn’t change market thinking on interest rates
The U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in July. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com were looking for 181,000 net new jobs in the month. Government statisticians revised the June jobs report up to 231.000 new jobs from 222,000. The official unemployment rate fell to 4.3%...
Xylem raises guidance for fiscal 2017 after slight earnings beat in second quarter
On August 1 Xylem (XYL) reported second quarter earnings of 59 cents a share (excluding one-time items), beating Wall Street earnings estimates by 2 cents a share. Thanks to recent acquisitions revenue of $1.16 billion climbed 24.9% year over year, slightly missing...
Higher production and lower capital spending–that’s the picture from U.S. oil shale producers
The earnings reports from U.S. oil shale producers are painting a very uniform picture so far: Production was up in the second quarter; capital spending budgets will be reduced for the remainder of 2017; and despite those capital spending cuts production is expected...
Apple earnings solid enough to support tech sector
The big questions for Apple (AAPL) won’t be answered until this fall when investors get to see the new iPhone (and see how hot or not it is) and learn whether or not Apple’s suppliers are indeed having trouble manufacturing key components such as the OLED...
What happened in the markets (and economy) last week–and what it means for August and September
Let’s try to put together a few events from last week into a coherent (or, if that’s too much to hope, at least a semi-coherent) explanation for where the equity market stands now. What events, you ask? How about Friday’s report on second quarter GDP...
Q2 GDP growth worse than hoped but better than it was last quarter
The first reading on second quarter U.S. GDP growth from the Bureau of Economic Analysis puts growth at 2.6% year over year. That’s below the consensus of 2.8% growth among economists surveyed by Briefing.com. But an important advance from the growth rate in the...
June durables positive lead in to tomorrow’s Q2 GDP report
Headline durable goods order climbed 6.5% in June. That’s well above the 2.9% increase expected by economists surveyed by Briefing.com, and quite a turnaround from the revised 0.1% drop recorded in May. Â The headline numbers weren’t nearly as good as they...
Oil rallies for another day on inventory drop in EIA report
The July 26 report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration followed up on the surprisingly good news yesterday on U.S. crude inventories from the American Petroleum Institute. The numbers from the American Petroleum Institute showed a much bigger than expected...
Oil’s big day as OPEC and U.S. oil shale both produce big news
U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate closed up 4.21% to $48.25 a barrel today, July 25. International benchmark Brent climbed 3.93% to $50.51 a barrel. Big moves. Exactly what you’d expect on a day when both OPEC and U.S. shale producers produced big news. On...
Long-term pick Bunge gets motivated
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully,” James Boswell quotes Samuel Johnson as saying upon the occasion of the hanging of William Dodd in 1777 for a loan scam. CEOs don’t...
Huge earnings beat can’t save Alphabet from metrics miss
Alphabet (GOOG) dropped 3.1% in after hours trading in spite of reporting earnings of $5.01 a share, well ahead of the $4.49 expected by Wall Street. Revenue of $26.01 billion, up 21% from the second quarter of 2016, also beat the Wall Street consensus of $25.6...
Market reaction to Microsoft isn’t making me jump up and down ahead of Facebook, Amazon earnings next week
In my Saturday Night Quarterback post last weekend on my subscription site JubakAm.com, I said that I was looking for Microsoft’s (MSFT) earnings, reported after the close yesterday, July 20, for clues on how the U.S. stock market would react to earnings reports...
MGM shares climb on news stock is to join S&P 500
Effective July 26, MGM Resorts International (MGM) will join the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index to replace Reynolds American (RAI), which is being acquired by British American Tobacco. (That means that all funds that track the S&P 500 index will...
Qualcomm’s earnings show cash flow under siege; selling out of Dividend Portfolio
The earnings Qualcomm (QCOM) reported yesterday, July 19, were okay. Earnings of 83 cents a share for the June quarter, in fact, beat the Wall Street consensus by two cents a share. Revenue of $5.37 billion was ahead of analyst projections of $5.25 billion, but still...
Good news on two fronts from dividend pick Kinder Morgan
Yesterday, July 19, Kinder Morgan (KMI) reported earnings per share of 15 cents, in line with Wall Street expectations. Revenues of $3.37 billion were ahead of the consensus estimate of $3.12 billion and represented year over year growth of 7.1%. Â That was item one...
Money managers most underweight U.S. stocks since January 2008, but NASDAQ is most crowded trade
According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s most recent survey, money managers are 20% underweight U.S. equities. (The survey was conducted from July 7 to July 13.) Managers haven’t been this underweight since January 2008. At that point the Standard &...
How the log jam among Republicans in Congress works from here on the budget and tax cuts
You can never be absolutely certain a bill has gone down to final defeat in this Republican-controlled Congress, but it certainly looks, as of late Tuesday night, that the Republican effort to repeal and  replace  Obamacare  has died in the Senate–and that a...
Today’s bank earnings and market reaction a mixed bag–which is an improvement from Friday’s pessimism
More big bank earnings today–and, fortunately, they were a mixed bag. Which made them markedly better than Friday’s results. Bank of America’s (BAC)’s second-quarter earnings per share rose 12% to 46 cents, beating by 3 cents a share. Revenue...
Adding Nidec (NJDCY) to my long-term 50 stocks portfolio
Back on July 11 I wrote a Sector Monday post on the robotics sector on my subscription site JubakAM.com. I’ve already added Fanuc (FANUY) to my long-term 50 Stocks portfolio. And tomorrow with this post I will be adding Nidec (NJDCY) to that same long-term...
China economic data too good to be true?
Talk about hitting your marks! Second quarter GDP grew in China at a 6.9% year over year rate, Beijing reported over the weekend. The consensus projection called for 6.8% growth. In the first quarter China’s GDP grew at 6.9% year over year. In June Fixed Asset...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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