America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
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) …
On June 2, 2015 Gallup released the poll results titled “U.S. Economic Confidence Index Slides to -7 in May.” Notable excerpts include: Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index dropped to an average of -7 in May, down from -3 in April. This drop continues the monthly downward drift since confidence peaked at +3 in January, and is …
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 …
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 Doug Short’s …
Doug Short had a blog post of May 29, 2015 (“Michigan Consumer Up from Preliminary , but still Below April Final“) 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 …
In the last post (“1st Quarter 2015 Corporate Profits“) I displayed, for reference purposes, a long-term chart depicting Corporate Profits After Tax. There are many ways to view this measure, both on an absolute as well as relative basis. One relative measure is viewing Corporate Profits as a Percentage of GDP. I feel that this …
Today’s GDP release (Q1, 2nd Estimate)(pdf) was accompanied by the BLS Corporate Profits report for the 1st Quarter. Of course, there are many ways to adjust and depict overall Corporate Profits. For reference purposes, here is a chart from the St. Louis Federal Reserve (FRED) showing the Corporate Profits After Tax (last updated May 29, 2015, …
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 May 28, 2015 update (reflecting data through May 22) is -1.09. Of course, there are a variety of other measures and indices that are supposed to measure financial stress and other related …
As a reference for long-term house price index trends, below is a chart, updated with the most current data (through March) from the CalculatedRisk blog post of May 26, 2015 titled “Real Prices and Price-to-Rent Ratio in March”: (click on chart to enlarge image) _____ The Special Note summarizes my overall thoughts about our economic situation SPX …
For reference purposes, below are two sets of charts depicting growth in the money supply. The first shows the MZM (Money Zero Maturity), defined in FRED as the following: M2 less small-denomination time deposits plus institutional money funds. Money Zero Maturity is calculated by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Here is the “MZM …