America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
As I have commented previously, as in the October 6, 2009 post (“A Note About Unemployment Statistics”), in my opinion the official methodologies used to measure the various job loss and unemployment statistics do not provide an accurate depiction; they serve to understate the severity of unemployment. However, even if one chooses to look at the …
This post is an update to past posts regarding stock market volatility. While I track many different measures of volatility, I find the following charts to be both simple and clear in depicting the recent volatility in the stock market. Overall, my analyses indicates that there are many reasons for this volatility, and the volatility is …
The St. Louis Fed’s Financial Stress Index (STLFSI) is one index that is supposed to measure stress in the financial system. Its reading as of the January 28, 2016 update (reflecting data through January 22) is -.339. Of course, there are a variety of other measures and indices that are supposed to measure financial stress and other related …
On February 2, 2016 Gallup released the poll results titled “U.S. Economic Confidence Index Flat at -11 in January.” Notable excerpts include: Americans’ confidence in the economy last month was unchanged from December. Gallup’s U.S. Economic Confidence Index averaged -11 for the month of January. This is much higher than most monthly averages recorded since …
For reference purposes, below are two charts of the VIX from year 2000 through yesterday’s (February 1, 2016) close, which had a closing value of 19.98. Here is the VIX Weekly chart, depicted on a LOG scale, with the 13- and 34-week moving averages, seen in the cyan and red lines, respectively: (click on chart …
In the March 9, 2012 post (“Charts of Equities’ Performance Since March 9, 2009 And January 1, 1980“) I highlighted two charts for reference purposes. Below are those two charts, updated through the latest daily closing price. The first is a daily chart of the S&P500 (shown in green), as well as five prominent (AAPL, IBM, …
StockCharts.com maintains long-term historical charts of various major stock market indices, interest rates, currencies, commodities, and economic indicators. As a long-term reference, below are charts depicting various stock market indices for the dates shown. All charts are depicted on a monthly basis using a LOG scale. (click on charts to enlarge images)(charts courtesy of StockCharts.com) …
“Stock market capitalization to GDP” is a notable and important metric regarding stock market valuation. In February of 2009 I wrote of it in “Does Warren Buffett’s Market Metric Still Apply?” Doug Short has recently published a post depicting this “stock market capitalization to GDP” metric. As seen in his February 1, 2016 post titled …
U.S. Dollar weakness is a foremost concern of mine. As such, I have extensively written about it. I am very concerned that the actions being taken to “improve” our economic situation will dramatically weaken the Dollar. Should the Dollar substantially decline from here, as I expect, the negative consequences will far outweigh any benefits. The negative impact of a substantial …