St. Louis Financial Stress Index – June 27, 2013 Update

On March 28, 2011 I wrote a post (“The STLFSI“) about the  St. Louis Fed’s Financial Stress Index (STLFSI) which is supposed to measure stress in the financial system.  For reference purposes, the most recent chart is seen below.  This chart was last updated on June 27, incorporating data from December 31,1993 to June 21, …

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Statement Concerning Too Big To Fail (TBTF)

I found the Opening Statement at the Full Committee Hearing on ‘Too-Big-to-Fail’ Post- Dodd-Frank, made yesterday (June 26) by The Committee On Financial Services’ Chairman Hensarling, to be notable. While I don’t necessarily agree with everything said in this Opening Statement – or with all aspects of the following excerpts – here are the excerpts I found …

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Deloitte “CFO Signals” Report 2Q 2013 – Notable Aspects

Recently Deloitte released their “CFO Signals” “High-Level Summary” report for the 2nd Quarter of 2013. As seen in page 2 of the report, “One hundred and five CFOs responded this quarter. Seventy percent of the CFOs are from public companies, and 80% are from companies with more than $1B in annual revenue.” Here are some of the …

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June 2013 Duke/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey – Notable Excerpts

On June 5 the June Duke/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey (pdf) was released.  It contains a variety of statistics regarding how CFOs view business and economic conditions. In this CFO Survey, I found the following to be the most notable excerpts: …optimism among CFOs about the U.S. economy is now above the long-run average for only the …

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Consumer Confidence Surveys – As Of June 27, 2013

Doug Short had a blog post of June 25 (“Consumer Confidence Beats Expectations, Highest Since January 2008“) in which he presents the latest Conference Board Consumer Confidence and Thomson/Reuters University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index charts.  They are presented below: (click on charts to enlarge images) – – There are a few aspects of the above …

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Durable Goods New Orders – Long-Term Charts Through May 2013

Many people place emphasis on Durable Goods New Orders as a prominent economic indicator and/or leading economic indicator. For reference, below are charts depicting this measure. First, from the St. Louis Fed site (FRED), a chart through May, last updated on June 25.  This value is 231,030 ($ Millions) : (click on charts to enlarge …

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Potential Losses In The Federal Reserve’s Portfolio

I have written extensively on the issue of Quantitative Easing (QE) and Interventions as I believe many aspects of these practices lack recognition and understanding.   Quantitative Easing in general carries an array of risks, detrimental impacts, unintended consequences, and complex impacts on the economy and markets. One such set of dynamics embedded within QE that …

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Trends Of S&P500 Earnings Forecasts

S&P500 earnings trends and estimates are a notably important topic, for a variety of reasons, at this point in time. FactSet publishes a report titled “Earnings Insight” that contains a variety of information including the trends and expectations of S&P500 earnings. For reference purposes, here are two charts as seen in the “Earnings Insight” (pdf) report of …

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S&P500 Earnings Estimates For Years 2013, 2014, And 2015

As many are aware, Thomson Reuters publishes earnings estimates for the S&P500.  (My other posts concerning S&P earnings estimates can be found under the S&P500 Earnings tag) The following estimates are from Exhibit 12 of “The Director’s Report” of June 24, 2013, and represent an aggregation of individual S&P500 component “bottom up” analyst forecasts: Year 2013 estimate: $111.01/share …

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