Industrial production and capacity utilization numbers were released by the Fed this morning. These numbers are important because production is one of five factors the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) looks at to judge recessions. The numbers were not good.

Production was down y-o-y for the first time since May 2002 besides a [...]

These two charts are interesting just for historical purposes. This tracks the FTSE All-share index from 1800-2007. While there were a number of peaks and valleys, the FTSE went pretty much nowhere until after World War II. At that point, the 25-year average yearly return began to turn up markedly.

The charts are [...]

This post is part of my chart of the day series.

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Inflation is clearly still a problem. The CPI for May 2008 was released by the BLS today showing consumer inflation rising at a 4.2% rate y-o-y, unadjusted for seasonal factors. This is either good news or bad news, depending on how you look at the finer details. The stock market chose to [...]

The U.S. Department of Labor just released the weekly report for unemployment insurance claims. Initial claims were 384,000, while continuing claims rose to 3.139 million. The 4-week average moved up to 3,099,250. This is 593,000 more than one year ago. Below is the chart for the last two years of continuing [...]

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Every week the U.S. Department of Labor puts out the previous week’s jobless claims statistics through its Employment and Training Administration (Doleta). Analysts look at it to get a sense of how employment is being affected by the underlying economy in order to predict what consumer spending will be like down the road. The [...]

Economists have a way of coming up with more ratios and statistics than you can shake a stick at. True to my profession, I have developed a long-term yardstick of market overvaluation and undervaluation. I have no short-hand for it yet so I’ll call it what it is: 10-yr. rolling average S&P 500 [...]

Knowing when to invest is just as important as investing at all. When one analyzes the returns in the market over longer periods (5+ years), it becomes obvious that certain periods of investing are much less lucrative than others. We are living in one of those times.
Since the late 1990s, in the wake [...]