After the close today, credit card company and Dow Jones constituent American Express (AXP) put out a startling press release. In it they said that American Express card member spending began to slow and delinquencies and write offs trended up in December….
I love those guys over at BeSpoke Investment Group. Every few days they’ll have an absolute gem of data analysis that nobody else has. Just before the close today they put up a post showing that the most widely owned…
About 2:15pm EST, as the market was reacting tepidly to Bernanke’s speech, news broke that Bank of America (BAC) is in talks to buy Countrywide (CFC). This led to a surge in Countrywide shares (CFC Intraday Chart) that carried over…
The Wall Street Journal reported today that in its monthly survey of economists (subscription required) their recession probability forecast increased to 42.1% – up from 38% last month and just 23% 6 months ago. And the trend has been strongly…
“…. in light of recent changes in the outlook for and the risks to growth, additional policy easing may well be necessary. The Committee will, of course, be carefully evaluating incoming information bearing on the economic outlook. Based on that…
At about 2:15pm EST, the bulls made a stand and pushed the S&P up 29 points (2.10%) in the last hour and 45 minutes. Volume on the popular stocks and ETFs that I looked at all picked up as the…
“The latest data suggest recession has now arrived, or will very shortly.” – Jan Hatzius, Chief Economist, Goldman Sachs I made fun of Goldman about 6 weeks ago for upping their recession probability forecast in 2008 from 30% to 40-45%….
At some point, probably some point soon, stocks will bounce. There are still bulls out there and at some point some will step in and start buying stocks. The question is: How much of a bounce can we expect? Personally,…
“I defined variant perception as holding a well founded view that was meaningful different from market consensus….. It was also critical to have a keen understanding of what the market expectations truly were. Thus, the process by which a disparate…
“One comment on sentiment as a contrary indicator. You’ll hear a lot of bulls say that this is a contrary indicator and suggests selling has exhausted itself. But I just don’t think we are anywhere close to that point. With markets…