The first quarter productivity number showed a strong increase of 5.4% up from shrinking 3.8% in the fourth quarter of last year. Productivity is important as it goes to the standard of living of all Americans. As we become more productive our earnings will be able to buy more products and services with the same […]
We are seeing shortages in several areas of our economy. Frist chips for the auto industry are in short supply causing carmakers to park incomplete vehicles. There was a fire in a chip factory in Tokyo that primarily made chips for autos and it will not be back in full production for another month or […]
This week the U.S. government issued four-week bonds with zero percent yields. So if you bought them lending the government your money for a month you get nothing for it. We live in interesting times. Do not confuse this with zero-coupon bonds which are a different kind of bond asset. A zero-coupon bond is a […]
The housing sector of our economy has been durable throughout the Pandemic. Mortgage rates fell and remain at historic lows, and have been the catalyst, and now with the reopening of the economy, it should remain an area of strong support for America’s economic growth. This morning’s new housing starts report for March was released […]
Last Friday the PPI number jumped to 1%. Inflation at the producer level rose over twice expected at the same time the economy is starting to gain traction. Yesterday the CPI (Consumer Price Index) rose to .6% from .4% last month. This is the fourth month in a row of increases and a 30-month high. […]
Last Friday the jobs report for March was released and it was a very good number at 916,000. However, there is another part of the report that not many pay attention to and that is the number of job openings. It climbed to 7.37 million and that was more than the pre-pandemic level. The economy […]
Once a month the ISM report for both manufacturing and services is released by the Institute for Supply Management out of Washington. The U.S. is more service-oriented than manufacturing-focused therefore the emphasis is ISM Services which was released this morning. The number was 64.7 the highest reading in 37 years. The month before the number […]
Why Bank Stocks are Falling this Week… It is all about the FED. The banks had an exemption that let them exclude Treasury’s and deposits with the central bank from the calculation. A key bank capital measure called the’ supplementary leverage’. They are going to let that exemption expire on March 31st. After the last […]
February retail sales fell hard at 3%, but that is not the whole story. January rose sharply, revised up to 7.6%. That was due to the covid relief package President Trump signed. Now we have President Biden signing a new stimulus last week so more checks are being sent. That new spending will show up […]
Yesterday the weekly report on unemployment claims fell to 712,000 the lowest level since November 7th where it was 711,000. That was less than expected and finally showed some movement in the right direction, down. However, that does not reveal the whole picture of people needing unemployment benefits and many of these payments expire after […]