America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
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) …
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 26, 2017 update (reflecting data through January 20, 2017) is -1.188. Of course, there are a variety of other measures and indices that are supposed to measure financial stress and other …
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 …
While the concept of Americans’ incomes can be defined in a number of ways, many prominent measures continue to show disconcerting trends. One prominent measure is the Employment Cost Index (ECI). Here is a description from the BLS document titled “The Employment Cost Index: what is it?“: The Employment Cost Index (ECI) is a quarterly …
Doug Short had a blog post of January 31, 2017 (“Consumer Confidence Retreated in January“) 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 find …
Each month I have been highlighting various estimates of U.S. recession probabilities. The latest update was that of January 5, 2017, titled “Recession Probability Models – January 2017.” While I don’t agree with the methodologies employed or the probabilities of impending economic weakness as depicted by these and other estimates, I do believe that the …
Many people place emphasis on Durable Goods New Orders as a prominent economic indicator and/or leading economic indicator. For reference, below are two charts depicting this measure. First, from the St. Louis Fed site (FRED), a chart through December 2016, updated on January 27, 2017. This value is $227,018 ($ Millions): (click on charts to …
Here are three charts from the St. Louis Fed depicting the velocity of money in terms of the MZM, M1 and M2 money supply measures. All charts reflect quarterly data through the 4th quarter of 2016, and were last updated as of January 27, 2017. As one can see, one of the three measures is at an …
For reference purposes, below is a chart from Doug Short’s “Q4 GDP Advance Estimate: Real GDP at 1.9%, Worse Than Forecast ” post of January 27, 2017, depicting Real GDP, with a trendline, as depicted. This chart reflects the Gross Domestic Product Q4 2016 Advance Estimate (pdf) of January 27, 2017: _____ The Special Note summarizes my overall thoughts about …