In my last post, I presented you with a bunch of data on debt levels broken down by sector of the economy (see “A brief look at the Asset-Based Economy at economic turns”).  I found it interesting that a secular pattern seemed to be at play when looking at the household debt charts.
Notice the three [...]

Gold hit a record high of $1,044.30 an ounce, beating the previous record of $1,032.35 set back in March and up a monster $26 on the day. The impetus is the crashing dollar, brought down by a report (later denied) that OPEC states and the Chinese were organizing a secret abandonment of the US dollar [...]

In July, I blogged on an interesting take on how employment affects equity returns during cyclical recoveries by Van Hoisington and Lacy Hunt. Their thesis was that a recovery in which employment lags the overall upturn significantly is bearish for stocks. Since then, employment has indeed lagged other economic indicators.  Witness the most recent employment [...]

How about all three. Faber released another provocative newsletter this month that has a little grist for investor of all stripes.
Boom. His short-term outlook is bullish because he believes money-printing will underpin the market even after the 60% increase in the S&P 500 from March 2009 lows. This puts him in the same camp [...]

Bill Gross is a bond man.  In fact, he is often called the “Bond King” because Pimco, the organization where he is founder and Co-Chief Investment Officer, is the largest bond fund in the world. In Bondland, what Gross says has a lot of weight.
And Gross has been talking about a “new normal” of deleveraging, [...]

Following up on my “Sell equities” post, I want to highlight a factoid from today’s David Rosenberg’s Breakfast with Dave distribution.
Never before has the S&P 500 rallied 60% from a low in such a short time frame as six months. And never before have we seen the S&P 500 rally 60% over an interval in [...]

In late August, I wrote a post called “Getting bearish again” in which I said that the bear market rally I had anticipated back in March was long in the tooth.  At the time, I mentioned 1026 on the S&P 500 as a sell signal.  With the S&P 500 now well over 1060 and gains [...]

This comes via TheStreet.com and Doug Kass, a noted market strategist:
Many strategists (both bullish and bearish) assume that a fair value P/E multiple — based on interest rates and inflation — rests at about 15.5 times. Averaging the 2009 and 2010 S&P consensus forecasts produces a melded $67.50 S&P EPS, a year-end target of 1045 [...]

If you’re looking for a good laugh over the weekend, you might try Dow 36,000 by James Glassman, just hired as custodian of the George W. Bush legacy (hat tip Scott). It’s about the new strategy for profiting from the huge rise in the stock market. Here’s what Wikipedia says:
The argument of Glassman and Hassett [...]

So we started September in an ugly way. With the markets down 2% across the board, and oil and bond yields also falling.  Forgive me for thinking this is a bad sign, but selling on good news doesn’t sound very bullish.
  And the ISM data definitely was bullish. Production 61.9 – Yay! New orders [...]