Here are today’s gold stock screens and data, along with cycle conditions and projections for gold and HUI index, and Chart of the Day...
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Radio Free Wall Street
Economics
Tomorrow Is A Big Day – Why Fed Should Not Act
Tomorrow is a big day, with the FOMC announcement and the Fed revealing what it wants you to think about what it thinks it’s going to think it wants you to think. Or something like that. This Fed “tranparency” thing has been covered to death in the mainstream media. I think it’s another utter...
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Retail Sales Not Too Bad
While the media was trumpeting a miss on retail sales, the truth, as usual, was somewhat different than the media message. The major media outlets reported that a 0.1% gain missed analysts’ consensus estimate of a gain of 0.3% for the month of December. As usual, the report was stated in seasonally adjusted terms,...
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Let’s Fold Vegas
If US cities were poker hands, America's invisible hand would have folded Las Vegas long ago for there is nothing capitalist about gambling. Aside from being an anti-capitalist theme park (about which, more later), Vegas, as it is affectionately k...
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Retail Sales Reports Give Me Gas
It just doesn’t get any more bullish than today’s retail sales report. Or so you would think if you only read the mainstream media reports. “More spending at online stores such as Amazon and electronics and applicance stores boosted retail sales by 0.5% in October, following a strong 1.1% surge in September,” shouted Marketwatch....
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First Time Claims Data a Renoir
Every week the US Department of Labor and Birth/Death Adjustments dutifully reports two sets of numbers on first time and continuing unemployment claims. One set is the actual number of people filing claims as tabulated by the 50 states. The other is a fictionalized number which purports to smooth out the seasonal variances so...
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Italiano Absurdo
The market rationale that the Berlusconi toss out is bullish is patently absurd. In reality Berlusconi inherited a sinking debt trap ship, and already ran a decent austerity program for Italy, keeping them in the game for the last few years. He also ke...
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Housing Outlook Clouding Up Again, And It’s Not Just Supply
Housing data over the past month has weakened. Part of that is normal seasonality, but the drop in contracts on existing homes in September was the worst in percentage terms since the housing collapse began. Although I believe that the supply problem is overblown, the last thing the market needs is further weakening in...
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Hit With Big Withdrawals, Fed Sells Assets, Borrows Cash
The Fed was hit with withdrawals of $83.3 billion last Wednesday, the largest withdrawals from its deposit accounts that were not associated with quarterly tax payments since February of 2009. $7 billion of that was the net cash transferred to the US Treasury from its note and bond sales less outlays. The Fed still...
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Improving Employment or Dead Cat Bounce
The real measure of sustained and sustainable improvement in the US economy isn’t just total employment; it’s full time employment. Part time jobs normally don’t pay enough to even pay the rent (The rent is too damn high.) let alone support a family. When business won’t invest in hiring full time workers, that may...
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First Time Unemployment Claims Increase But Less Than Usual
“Fewer people applied for unemployment benefits last week, a hopeful sign that the job market might be picking up,” trumpeted the AP, in a news item picked up by news organizations across the US and the world. There’s just one minor problem. First time claims actually increased by 9,361. The AP, and everybody else,...
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Foreign Central Banks Have Left the Building
Tracking foreign central bank (FCB) holdings of US Treasury and Agency (Fannie, Freddie, and minor government agencies) paper has been one of the most important lines of inquiry in my analysis of market liquidity for the past 9 years. This information is available virtually in real time each week in the Fed’s weekly H41...
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What Europe Needs To Do
This is a Best of Capitalstool.com repost from the Stool Pigeons Wire by Lugnut, a successful California entrepreneur with European experience. Part of the problem facing European economic integration is that the European social model is expensive and you had different economic “cultures” that funded it prior to integration. Europeans do not spend as...
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Glimmers of Housing Hope In Mortgage Applications Data
Purchase mortgage applications rose 6.4% last week according to the Mortgage Bankers Association and major media outlets. As always, the media report only the seasonally adjusted data fed to them by the MBAA. Rarely should a week to week change have any seasonal effects, although last week would be an exception because the week...
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Unemployment Claims Data and Economists’ Exploding Brain Syndrome
With the mainstream media reporting the seasonally adjusted first time unemployment claims down by 6,000 it’s time for a reminder that this number is fake, and may or may not give an accurate representation of the trend. If it does, it’s purely a coincidence. Economists and financial journos are in love with the seasonally...
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Not Merry Twistmas
Reposted from an email bulletin- I’m finally back up to speed after my trip back from my summer base in Canada to base camp FL. Yesterday I posted a Wall Street Examiner Professional Edition Fed Report update. This is an excerpt from that report. The Fed’s security holdings rose in the week ended 10/12/11...
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Threads In A Foreboding Tapestry
Two weeks ago I began to report to subscribers of the Wall Street Examiner Professional Edition Fed Report that foreign central banks (FCBs) had begun to engage in unprecedented levels of disgorgement of their massive holdings of US Treasury and Agency paper. Prior to this year, the FCBs had typically absorbed the equivalent of...
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Did The NAR Lie About August Pending Home Sales?
Data released today by the Mortgage Bankers Ass. suggest that housing demand is again cratering. In the last week of September mortgage purchase applications were down about 12% versus the same week last year. This is similar to the difference at the end of August, when the drop was about 13%. Chart and data-...
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Home Sales Contracts Better than Media, NAR report
The mainstream financial media is widely misreporting the NAR’s Pending Home Sales data this morning, simply parroting the NAR’s seasonally manipulated data. As it turns out, the NAR is screwing its own pooch because the actual, not manipulated data is actually much better than the seasonally smoothed numbers imply. That’s not to say sales...
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Durable Goods Orders Not A Durable Indicator
“Orders for U.S. capital goods climbed in August by the most in three months, a sign business investment continues to support the recovery,” shouted Bloomberg today on news that durable goods orders rose in August. Citing the seasonally adjusted data, like Bloomberg, Marketwatch took a much more nuanced approach, “Orders for U.S. durable goods...
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Housing Picture No Darker
The article is an excerpt from the Wall Street Examiner Professional Edition Housing Update for subscribers. Scroll to the end for the subscriber link to the complete report. Housing data for this month suggests that the usual seasonal uptick in prices has ended. Data is mixed as to whether the seasonal decline that normally...
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VIX Says Buy 5 Times
If you are the technically oriented type, here’s something for you to chew on. It’s a page ripped from this morning’s Wall Street Examiner Professional Edition market update. This report is updated daily, usually posted in the evening. It includes 11 proprietary charts and tables to help you better understand where the market stands...
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Retail Sales Reports Right, But For Wrong Reason
Bloomberg got it partly right when taking the gloomy view it reported that, “Retail sales in the U.S. unexpectedly stagnated in August as a lack of employment and limited income growth restrained demand, highlighting the risk the economy will stall.” Marketwatch took the glass half full approach, saying, “Retail sales were steady in August, as consumers...
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The Pulse of Commerce and The Chicken’s Dilemma
The Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index™ (PCI) is an interesting indicator that correlates well with the movements of the stock market. Comparing the PCI with the SPX can provide useful insights at times. According to the Ceridian Index website, “The Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index™ is based on real-time diesel fuel consumption data for...
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Unemployment Claims Give Fed More Ammo
An analysis of the actual, not seasonally manipulated and massaged unemployment claims data shows some deterioration in employment, week to week. Weakening employment data has raised expectations for Fed action. Actual initial claims rose by 9,355. In the same week last year they were down by 1,273. The average increase in new claims in...
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The Price of Bank Immortality?
ZURICH, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Switzerland is set to partially meet a U.S. ultimatum and deliver an estimate of the amount of assets held by U.S. residents in secret accounts at Swiss banks, possibly up to $30 billion, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Citi...
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Bloody September
The following paragraphs are free excerpts from today’s Wall Street Examiner Professional Edition Treasury update. The subscriber link to the complete report is below. As I estimated last week, the Treasury needed more cash than originally scheduled, or originally forecast by the TBAC. It announced a big cash management bill on Monday, and another...
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What The Market Wants, Government and Fed Can’t Give
Aaron Krowne of ML-Implode.com, Russ Winter of Winter Watch, and the Wall Street Examiner’s Lee Adler discuss the speculation about what the Fed and government will do next, what the impacts might be, and why they can’t do any of it. Lee reports on bad news from the Treasury on upcoming supply, and falling...
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Yes, Ezra, There Is No Santa Claus
Ezra Klein asked (and answered) in the Washington Post today, “Why are the markets down today? No reason.” What would you expect him to say? He’s a mainstream media journalist, and therefore, by definition, clueless. I took a moment to answer his rhetorical question/answer with the real explanation (as I see it) in the...
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