Category Archive: Finance, No picture
CVS Is Sick
Image Source: PexelsOne would figure the nation’s biggest pharmacy would be a safe, conservative investment. Nope. CVS has lost about HALF its value in just two years. From a charting perspective, it’s been behaving beautifully, because its breakout/support (blue line) turned into resistance (see red arrow), and now we’ve taken a hard fall to very long-term […]
March JOLTS Report: Declines In Everything, Fortunately Including Layoffs
Image Source: PexelsAfter almost half a year of general stabilization or very slow deceleration, the JOLTS report for March featured multi-year lows in almost all of its components. Job openings (blue in the graph below), a soft statistic that is polluted by imaginary, permanent, and trolling listings, declined -325,000 to a three year low of 8.488 million. Actual […]
FOMC Leaves Rates Unchanged, Says (Bigger Than Expected) QT Taper To Start In June
Image source: PixabaySince the last FOMC meeting, on March 20th, gold has been the biggest outperformer (interesting along with dollar strength), while stocks, bonds, and crude (and crypto) have all been sold (with bonds and oil equally ugly)…Source: BloombergAnd since March 20th, US macro data has serially disappointed…Source: BloombergMore problematically, since the last FOMC meeting, inflation data has […]
Jim Cramer Has Lost Conviction In Starbucks CEO
Image Source: Unsplash Jim Cramer criticised Starbucks CEO for a disappointing quarter. He questions whether his Charitable Trust should hold $SBUX. Starbucks stock is down more than 15% on Wednesday morning. Jim Cramer seems to have lost conviction in Laxman Narasimhan – the chief executive of Starbucks Corp (SBUX) after a “terrible” quarter the coffee giant reported […]
Central Bank Gold Buying Sets New 1st Quarter Record
Image Source: UnsplashThe central banks have been on a gold buying spree ever since Russia was sanctioned by the US in early 2022. And they just set a new first-quarter record for the amount of gold purchased.Given the events that have occurred since then, which now include escalating Middle East tensions, the news isn’t entirely surprising. […]
ETFs To Buy As Eli Lilly Beats Q1 Earnings, Lifts Outlook
Image Source: PixabayEli Lilly and Company (LLY – Free Report) posted mixed first-quarter 2024 earnings, beating earnings estimates but lagging on revenues. The pharmaceutical giant raised its outlook for 2024 on rapidly climbing sales of the new obesity drug Zepbound and its counterpart for diabetes, Mounjaro.The stock jumped 6% in response to the earnings beat. Investors seeking to […]
Dow Jones Industrial Average Struggles To Recover From Recent Backslide As Fed Rounds Corner
Image Source: Unsplash Dow Jones stuck near recent lows as Fed looms. Equities are mixed as markets await Fed policy guidance. NFP Friday will solidify market outlook on US labor market. After this week’s backslide, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is stuck in a rut, dragging the index below 38,000.00 as investors buckle down for […]
Decomposing Sentiment
Image Source: PexelsRepublicans and lean Republican respondents really, really, really don’t like economic conditions right now, switching “bigly” upon Trump’s election, contributing to an outsize impact on the overall University of Michigan consumer sentiment index. Democrats and lean Democratic respondents think things are about the same as mid-2016 (under Obama).Figure 1: University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment relative […]
Feds Scrutinizing Block’s Square And Cash App, Eyeing If Transactions Funded Terror And Skirted Sanctions
Image Source: UnsplashFederal prosecutors are investigating compliance issues at Block, the fintech firm co-founded by Jack Dorsey, according to a new report from NBC, citing “two people with direct knowledge”. Questions about the company started swirling back in March 2023 when short seller Hindenburg Research released a report called “Block: How Inflated User Metrics and “Frictionless” Fraud Facilitation Enabled Insiders […]
The Energy Report: Fed Freak Out
Photo by Timothy Newman on UnsplashOil prices tried to stay strong in the face of the market doing a Federal Reserve freak out. Rumors that the Fed today is going to be extremely hawkish, even reports of potentially talking about raising rates before the end of the year, caused a major sell off in a lot of the […]
