America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
Here is an update of various indicators that are supposed to predict and/or depict economic activity. These indicators have been discussed in previous blog posts: The September 2019 Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) updated as of September 23, 2019: The CFNAI, with current reading of .10: source: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Chicago Fed National Activity Index …
For reference purposes, here is Total Household Net Worth from a long-term perspective (from 1945:Q4 through 2019:Q2). The last value (as of the September 23, 2019 update) is $113.462455 Trillion: (click on each chart to enlarge image) – Also of interest is the same metric presented on a “Percent Change from a Year Ago” basis, …
The following chart is from the CalculatedRisk post of September 20, 2019 titled “Fed Flow of Funds: Household Net Worth Increased in Q2.” It depicts Total Household Net Worth as a Percent of GDP. The underlying data is from the Federal Reserve’s Z.1 report, “Financial Accounts of the United States“: (click on chart to enlarge …
As I stated in my July 12, 2010 post (“ECRI WLI Growth History“): For a variety of reasons, I am not as enamored with ECRI’s WLI and WLI Growth measures as many are. However, I do think the measures are important and deserve close monitoring and scrutiny. Below are three long-term charts, from the Doug …
On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 FOMC Chairman Jerome Powell gave his scheduled September 2019 FOMC Press Conference. (link of video and related materials) Below are Jerome Powell’s comments I found most notable – although I don’t necessarily agree with them – in the order they appear in the transcript. These comments are excerpted from the …
On September 18, 2019 the September 2019 Duke/CFO Global Business Outlook was released. It contains a variety of statistics regarding how CFOs view business and economic conditions. In this CFO survey press release, I found the following to be the most notable excerpts – although I don’t necessarily agree with them: The CFO Optimism Index, which historically …
Recently Deloitte released their “CFO Signals” “High-Level Summary” report for the 3rd Quarter of 2019. As seen in page 2 of the report, there were 172 survey respondents. As stated: “Each quarter (since 2Q10), CFO Signals has tracked the thinking and actions of CFOs representing many of North America’s largest and most influential companies. All respondents are …
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 September 12, 2019 update (reflecting data through September 6, 2019) is -1.303. Of course, there are a variety of other measures and indices that are supposed to measure financial stress and …
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 …
As many are aware, Refinitiv 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 24 of the “S&P500 Earnings Scorecard” (pdf) of September 16, 2019, and represent an aggregation of individual S&P500 component “bottom up” analyst forecasts. For reference, the …