“The Billion Prices Project” – Comments

I am finding “The Billion Prices Project” to be valuable. From the homepage, “The Billion Prices Project is an academic initiative that collects prices from hundreds of online retailers around the world on a daily basis to conduct economic research.” Two of the most prominent benefits I see from the data include that data is …

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Companies Fastest To $1 Billion In Sales

In Friday’s post, I mentioned consumers’ migration to lower-priced stores. This continual consumer migration to lower-priced sources can be seen in a variety of statistics.  One statistic that I find particularly interesting is contained in a Forbes story of September 3, 2010 titled “The Next Web Phenom.” At the end of the story it states …

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Walmart’s Q32011 Results – Comments

I found two especially notable items in Walmart’s Q3 conference call transcript (pdf).  I view Walmart’s results as particularly noteworthy given their retail prominence and focus on low prices.  I previously commented upon their results in the May 20 post. First, from page 13, “Comp store sales for the 13-week period, which ended October 29, …

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Political Volatility – November 2010

The results of yesterday’s elections further solidify the trend of increasing political volatility.  Survey results indicate that much of this volatility has been driven by widespread dissatisfaction concerning the economic situation. While this volatility has been recognized, many of its implications have lacked recognition. On January 25, 2010 I wrote a post titled “Political Volatility.” …

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Recession Measures – Updated

On April 21 I wrote a post titled “Recession Measures – Two Charts.” That post referenced an April 12  CalculatedRisk blog post titled “Recession Measures.” In it, Bill discussed key measures that the NBER uses to determine recoveries, and posted four charts. Here are those charts, updated in his October 29 post.  The charts are …

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4 Confidence Charts – October 2010

Here are four charts reflecting confidence survey readings.  These are from the SentimenTrader.com site. I find these charts valuable as they provide a long-term history of each survey, which is rare. Each survey chart is plotted in blue, below the S&P500: (click on each chart to enlarge image) Conference Board Consumer Confidence, last updated 9-28-10: …

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Disturbing Charts (Update 2), Part II

As a continuation of the last post, here are three other charts that I find disturbing in nature. These charts raise a lot of questions.  Many of these questions I have discussed in the blog, as I believe they are very significant in nature.  Additionally, these charts should highlight the “atypical” nature of our economic …

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Disturbing Charts (Update 2), Part 1

In the next two posts, I am going to display various charts that I find disturbing.   These charts would be disturbing at any point in the economic cycle; that they depict such a tenuous situation now – 15 months after the official (as per the 9-20-10 NBER announcement) June 2009 end of the recession – …

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