September was weak for retail sales even though this week’s revision had a .8% improvement. For October there was a strong bounce-back +1.7%, when you exclude autos, a big-ticket item, it was still +1.7%. Industrial production jumped 1.6% from shrinking 1.3% in September. Capacity utilization also rose to 76.4% from 75.2%. Part of the reason […]
This has been the topic of concern for months. The FED seems to be only marginally worried having repeatedly stated that it is transitory. The bond market and other pundits appear to be separating themselves from that belief. This morning October’s CPI (Consumer Price Index) was released, and the expectation was for an increase from […]
ADP reported earlier in the week that 517,000 new private-sector jobs were created in October. This morning the official report came in counting private and public jobs. That number was 531,000. These are very strong numbers pushing the unemployment rate to 4.6% from 4.8%. At the same time, hourly earnings rose .4% which is a […]
Zillow is well known as the website for estimating home values. They have virtually no competition in that space. Then they decided that it would be a good idea to start buying property and get into the buying and selling of real property. They lost $330 million in the most recent third quarter and decided […]
The FCC, in a vote of 4 to 0, banned China Telecom Corp. This is a large firm in China but does not have much reach in the U.S. However, the FCC already banned Huawei and four other firms from China. This new ban is despite the Biden administration attempting to smooth over tension between […]
Not surprising, new home construction fell in September. The peak in housing was late summer. Permits for new construction fell by 7.7% from August, back to last year’s level. There was a substantial collapse in multifamily construction, whereas single-family homes shrank 1%. Finally, some of the slow down was a result of disruptions in the […]
We all know that there is a huge problem in the worldwide supply chain, but what is exactly the problem. It is not a simple problem in which we can just get back to normal because normal was already showing strain in the U.S. Over the years, the U.S. has outsourced billions of dollars of […]
The popularity of an electronic currency such as Bitcoin could doom itself simply because of its success. Governments, including the U.S., manage their currencies. They will print more money when they think the economy needs it, and they will restrict it to control inflation and slow down an overheated economy. They use money as a […]
We have seen a strong spike in inflation after the presidential election. Prior to covid, it was running about 2.5% and now it is double that. The 3-year inflation expectations put out by the government suggests that inflation will run at about 4%. Recently, the CPI (Consumer Price Index) reported an increase of only .3% […]
We are in September after a healthy move up for August. In fact, the stock market benchmark S&P 500 has risen every month for the last 7 months in a row. That is one of the longest winning streaks ever. It has made 13 record highs in August. September usually is noted for weakness, and […]