» Lance Robert

The relentless push higher in the market is beginning to weigh on retail investors.  However, as we have discussed several timesrecently, these advances, especially when driven by artificial influences, can stretch the markets to extreme limits along with investors patience.  It is this final cap...

Theoretically, stock prices are a reflection of the future expectations of earnings.  If the expectations are that earnings in the future will be X and currently stocks are trading at a discount to those future earnings prospects then stock prices should rise.  The issue today, however, is that th...

The release of the retail sales data yesterday sure got a lot of people excited about the economy.  In reality, this was much more a statement of inflationary pressures and weather related anomalies than economic improvement.  The revision to January’s data which increased to 0.6% growth wil...

Last week we posted an article, during the Tuesday market slide of over 1%, entitled “Has The Correction Started?”.  That answer is no.  In fact, since the beginning of 2012 there has only been one week that has seen a decline which was the 2nd week of February when the S&P 500 wa...

If you listen to the bleating of the mainstream media and economists there is absolutely nothing to worry about and Friday’s employment report proves it.  The official unemployment rate remained steady at 8.3 percent, and 227,000 jobs were added.  Just don’t look at the number of long-term...

The U.S. Labor Department’s monthly employment report is one of the most-anticipated market-moving data points watched by investors and traders on Wall Street. But ahead of Friday’s February jobs data, CNBC reports that the Labor Department and other government agencies are conce...

As oil prices continue to surge, economists are locked in a full-on debate about how much they will affect the economy. Bulls argue that “this time is different,” saying that today’s consumers have handled oil above $100 a barrel so far, so they’ll be able continue to handle...

In this past weekend’s newsletter I stated:  “There it is. I am calling it. The long awaited correction is coming during the month of March.”   Today, at least as of the time of this posting, the S&P 500 is having its biggest one day correction of 2012.   While that sou...

When I was growing up my father told me more than once that “if you do that, son, you aren’t going to like the consequences.”   Generally, those words were spoken to me just before I wanted to do something to fill an immediate desire – such as spending all my yard mowing m...

Over the last few days they have been quite a few articles and comments made about the recent rise in oil and gasoline prices.  There is a growing consensus among the mainstream analyst community that “this time is different” because the rise in oil prices, and the subsequent rise in ...

Earlier this week the Commerce Department issued their second revision to fourth quarter GDP growth up to 3.0 percent from the initial estimate of 2.8 percent.  This compares to 3rd quarter GDP of 1.8%.  The upward revision to the percent change in real GDP primarily reflected an upward revision t...

There have been numerous media stories out over the last couple of weeks about the recovery in housing at long last.   Of course, this is the same housing bottom call that we heard in 2009, 2010 and 2011 – so why not drag it out again for 2012.  Eventually, the call will be right and they w...