November 5th, 2009 by Belisarius
A lot of action on the earnings losses and economic announcements front. So, let’s start. Initial jobless claims came at 512k vs. 523k consensus and 530k the week before. Finally some improvement, but still at some 170k job losses a month.
Markets, off-course, cheered the data. All major indexes ended with nice gains of a 2% and more. We will see if the positive action continues after the tomorrows unemployment figures. Could be, consensus on non-farm payrolls is pretty low at 175k job loses, I think we could manage to beet that.
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October 30th, 2009 by Belisarius
I felt yesterday like someone jumped out of the boy and shouted: ” you’re punk’d.!”. Some thing like in this video (fast forward to 1.38):
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October 22nd, 2009 by Belisarius
hina GDP grew 8.9% in third quarter vs. 9% consensus. All risky assets headed lower on the news, U.S. dollar higher. Puzzled, makes no sense. Bloomberg explanation: China’s Economy Grows 8.9%, Fastest Pace in a Year.
The media focus is on stimulus, monetary expansion. Chinese officials have already addressed those issues, at least verbal. In my view the depressed exports; over capacity; real estate bubble; credit boom are big issues and I am little bit skeptic on can China ride out of this recession smoothly. Correction today in Asia on concern of stimulus withdrawal.
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October 8th, 2009 by Belisarius
As expected equity markets got a nice push up from Alcoa earnings. Looks like the earnings season will probably have similar “better than expected” flavor like the one preceding.The market looks bound to new highs.
The news flow on consumer and credit card credit continues to throw shadows on this equity rally. Consumer credit shrank for the seventh month in a row, contracting 12 billion USD in August to 2.46 trillion USD implying -5.8% annual growth rate. Credit-card debt fell for a record 11th straight month, down 9.9 billion USD. Shrinking at annualized rate of 13.1%. The credit outstanding ended at 899.4 billion USD. This could pose important set back to the recovery of U.S. economy as it shows the lenders are reluctant to extend credit to the economy and consumers are keen to reduce its debt. Consumer credit press release. I will post again the Meredith Whitney article explaining the issue in detail. WSJ story: The Credit Crunch Continues
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September 24th, 2009 by Belisarius
Returning to my screens after few days of vacation and couple of days of useless erins. Let me recap economic announcements in the last few days. Housing starts at consensus of 598k, building permits at 579k versus consensus of 583k. We have a 20% rise from the lows a few months ago. House prices rose 0.3% vs. consensus of 0.5%. Important indicator to watch, as seasonal effects ad government stimulus could fade into the winter. Mortgage applications up 12.8%.
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