Chicago Fed National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI)

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 June 23, 2016 update (reflecting data through June 17) is -.868. Of course, there are a variety of other measures and indices that are supposed to measure financial stress and other related …

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Four Charts Of Recent S&P500 Price Volatility – June 29, 2016

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 …

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Deloitte “CFO Signals” Report Q2 2016 – Notable Aspects

Recently Deloitte released their “CFO Signals” “High-Level Summary” report for the 2nd Quarter of 2016. As seen in page 2 of the report, “One hundred forty CFOs responded during the two-week period ending May 20. Seventy-two percent of respondents are from public companies, and 78% are from companies with more than $1B in annual revenue. …

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Consumer Confidence Surveys – As Of June 28, 2016

Doug Short had a blog post of June 28, 2016 (“Consumer Confidence Rebounds in June“) 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 charts that I …

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U.S. Deflation – June 28, 2016 Update

This post provides an update to various past posts discussing deflation and “deflationary pressures,” including the most recent post, that of January 27, 2016 titled “U.S. Deflation – January 27, 2016 Update.”   I have extensively written of “deflationary pressures” and deflation as I continue to believe that prolonged and deep U.S. deflationary conditions are …

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Median Household Income Chart

I have written many blog posts concerning the worrisome trends in income and earnings. Doug Short, in his June 23, 2016 post titled “Real Median Household Income Declined Again in May” produced the chart below.  It is based upon data from Sentier Research, and it shows both nominal and real median household incomes since 2000, as …

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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 2016, 2017 & 2018 EPS Forecasts

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 20 of the “S&P500 Earnings Scorecard” (pdf) of June 23, 2016, and represent an aggregation of individual S&P500 component “bottom up” analyst forecasts.  For reference, …

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