America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
In the last post (“4 Confidence Charts – April 2, 2012 Update“) I displayed four charts indicating various long-term consumer and small business confidence readings as compared to the S&P500. Doug Short had a blog post of March 30 (“Michigan Consumer Sentiment: Highest Since February 2011“) in which he presents the Conference Board and University …
Here are four charts reflecting confidence survey readings. The first three are from the SentimenTrader.com site. I find these charts valuable as they provide a long-term history of each survey, which is somewhat rare. Each survey chart is plotted in blue, below the S&P500: (click on each chart to enlarge image) Conference Board Consumer Confidence, last …
Many people place emphasis on Durable Goods New Orders as a prominent economic indicator and/or leading economic indicator. For reference, here are a few charts depicting this measure. First, from the St. Louis Fed site (FRED), a chart through February, last updated on March 28. This February value is 211,765 ($ Millions) : (click on …
On March 13, Gallup released a poll titled “U.S. Economic Confidence Matches Best in Four Years.” A few notable excerpts: U.S. economic confidence improved sharply to -18 in the week ending March 11 from -25 the prior week — the highest since the week ending Feb. 13, 2011, when it was also -18. The -18 readings …
In the March 8 post (“Total Household Net Worth As A Percent Of GDP 4Q 2011“) I displayed a long-term chart depicting Total Household Net Worth as a percentage of GDP. For reference purposes, here is Total Household Net Worth from a long-term perspective (from 1949:Q4 to 2011:Q4). The last value (as of March 9, …
The following chart is from the CalculatedRisk blog post of March 8, 2012 titled “Fed’s Flow of Funds: Household Real Estate Value declined $213 billion in Q4.” It depicts Total Household Net Worth as a Percent of GDP. The underlying data is from The Federal Reserve Flow of Funds 4Q 2011 report: (click on chart to enlarge image) As …
Many people place emphasis on Durable Goods New Orders as a prominent economic indicator and/or leading economic indicator. For reference, here are a few charts depicting this measure. First, from the St. Louis Fed site (FRED), a chart through January, last updated on February 28. This January value is 206,090 ($ Millions) : – Here …
In his Friday interview to CNBC, Lakshman Achuthan commented about the the velocity of money. The excerpt from the transcript: you look at the velocity of money. how often does money exchange — all that money that’s going in, they’re goosing the money supply, how often does it exchange in the economy? that’s a really important metric on the health of the economy. it has …
I find the following charts to be disturbing. These charts would be disturbing at any point in the economic cycle; that they depict such a tenuous situation now – 33 months after the official (as per the 9-20-10 NBER announcement) June 2009 end of the recession – is especially notable. These charts raise a lot …
I found various notable items in Walmart’s Q4 2012 conference call transcript (pdf) dated February 21, 2012. I view Walmart’s results and comments as particularly noteworthy given their retail prominence and focus on low prices. I have previously commented on their quarterly results; these previous posts are found under the “paycheck to paycheck” tag. Here are various excerpts that I …