On Friday I wrote: The markets are somewhat confusing right now. For the 9 weeks beginning Monday July 17, the Dow has rallied from around 10,750 to today’s close of 11,560 – a 7.5% rally. Over the same period the…
On Tuesday I wrote: The Street interpreted Best Buy’s results as saying that the American consumer is not dead and will continue to spend on discretionary items. That interpretation seems to have played out this week. The S&P Retail Index…
Before the open today Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), the nation’s largest electronics retailer, announced a pretty good fiscal (ended Aug 26, 2006) second quarter. Same store sales in the United States were up 3.0% in the three months ended Aug…
Driven by torrid growth in China base metals have experienced a phenomenal bull market the last few years. Copper has gone from around 75 cents/lb. three years ago to more than $3.50/lb. today. Nickel has gone from around $2/lb. towards…
A few weeks after each Fed meeting, the minutes for that meeting are released. The minutes are not an actual transcript of what was said but a shamelessly doctored summary. As I tried to explain a couple weeks ago the…
Stephen Roach, Chief Economist at Morgan Stanley, had some noteworthy things to say about the bursting of the housing bubble and its effects on the US and global economies in his most recent two commentaries at Morgan Stanley’s Global Economic…
After the bell on Wednesday women’s retailer Chico’s FAS (NYSE: CHS) warned that August same store sales are showing a decline of about 3% and that it sees dismal same store sales for its third quarter, according to the Wall…
The Wall Street Journal today published an editorial, “The House the Fed Built” (subscription required), echoing the interpretation of recent Fed history I posted a couple weeks ago: This is the housing market the Federal Reserve built. That is to say,…
The Wall Street Journal ran a noteworthy article on Monday (subscription required) citing evidence that middle income consumers are slowing down their spending in the face of high gas prices and a slowing housing market: … Ms. Liebmann [president of…
After 17 straight quarter point rate hikes going back to June 2004 the Fed paused on Tuesday leaving the federal funds rate at 5.25% (from 1% back in June of 2004). In this post I want to try and explain…