» 2011 » August

Solar stocks have been a terrible investment over the past few years. Some of the big public names have been hammered. FSLR = -65% LDK = -88% ESLR = -100% SPWR = -88% Bloomberg had a story today on this. The bottom line: The solar-equipment industry is beginning a consolidation that’s already...

The Latest Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index was released this morning based on data collected through August 18th. The 44.5 reading is significantly below the consensus estimate of 52.0, reported by Briefing.com, and a sharp decline from the July downward revision to 59.2 (from 59.5). H...

We have attempted to keep professionals and investors aware of a key flag/pennant pattern in the Shanghai index for almost a year. Back in April the Shanghai index was at the top of the flag pattern and we suggested to “harvest gains” in this commentary. The pattern was suggesting that ...

Up until August, this year had been fairly dull as the S&P 500 was in a trading range somewhere between 1250 and 1350. July ended near the upper end of that range and by August 2nd we were once again testing the lower 1250 level. Over the following week the S&P 500 plunged roughly 150 po...

Why did markets rip 6.6% in 15 hours? Obviously no one really knows but I would surmise it is a combination of lack of conviction and retail being led to the slaughter house. Zero Hedge put up a great chart of the parabolic rise in short interest at the very same time the SPX was hitting 1,100. This...

I do believe this is the most important post I have written to date. Beyond the arrogance of that statement which none is intended I do ask that you take a few extra minutes and “study” this post as it discusses a very important and seldom mentioned funding market that the Fed may have impaired ...

Markets have been crazy this month, but rather than try to wade through all the news, much of which doesn’t seem to have much informational content, I thought I would duck out altogether and instead make a list of things I expect will happen over the next several years. We are so caught up in n...

My monthly updates on GDP and its revisions feature column charts illustrating real GDP. These have the advantage of highlighting the patterns of change and the correlation between negative GDP and recessions. Click for a larger image Real GDP Per-Capita Growth For a better understanding of the his...

Capital flight from European banks has now reached such a state that for one undisclosed bank needed emergency funding last week for a mere $5 million. Previously, the ECB stepped in to provide $500 million in emergency liquidity measures to non-disclosed banks. As money flees Europe, it lands in US...

‘If you build it he will come’. - Field Of Dreams. ‘We built it and he did not show’. - US Economic Reality. The consumer driven recession has begun. Keeping it very simple of the four GDP components (consumer, fixed investment, government and net trade) the consumer has si...

The Federal Reserve played its part well, along with the Treasury Department, the White House, and Congress, in helping prevent the financial meltdown of 2008-2009 from turning the ‘Great Recession’ of 2007-2009 into the next Great Depression. But its solo intervention with its QE2 quantitative ...

The chart below is my way to visualize real GDP change since 2007. I’ve used a stacked column chart to segment the four major components of GDP with a dashed line overlay to show the sum of the four, which is real GDP itself. My data source for this chart is the Excel file accompanying the BEA...