Following last month’s bounce in permits (later revised lower), September expectations were for a decline of 2.1% (presumably analysts knew of the storms’ potential impact when they guessed) but it utterly collapsed – down 4.5%. Worse still Housing Starts were supposed to drop just 0.4% in September but crashed 4.7%. These are 2 to 3 standard deviation misses of expectations… so don’t simply blame the storms as analysts were well aware that they occurred when they made their forecasts… Notably, multifamily starts tumbled to 286K, lowest since Sept 2016… And it was clearly not just the hurricanes &...
Canada & Mexico Reject US Demands The Trump administration became involved in yet more political embarrassment yesterday as Mexico and Canada rejected the President’s demand during talks aimed at securing a renegotiation of NAFTA. Negotiators operating on behalf of the US government presented a slew of proposals aimed at getting the Canadian government to remove its protectionist controls around its dairy and poultry sectors. The breakdown of the talks was exacerbated by what many have called an “unusual” joint public appearance by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Freeland and US Trade Representative Robert Lightizer who traded ...
USD/JPY The US dollar initially fell during the day on Tuesday, reaching towards the 112 level. We found enough support at that level to turn things around though, but then fell after words. Because of this, we ended up forming a bit of a shooting star that sits just above the 112 handle. I think that this market should continue to find a lot of noise in this general vicinity, so therefore I’m not looking for some type of major selloff. However, if we were to fall from here, I think there is plenty of support at the 111-level underneath to keep the market afloat. If we break above the top of the shooting star for the day, that is reason eno...
The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly broke above the 23,000-point mark for the first time on Tuesday, driven by strong earnings from UnitedHealth and Johnson & Johnson, but finished the session just below that milestone. The US markets were up 0.5% during the week. UK’s FTSE was flat following comments by Bank of England policymakers which were taken as dovish by market participants. On the data front, Britain’s inflation rate soared to a fresh five-and-a-half-year high in September. The consumer prices index rose 3% last month, up from 2.9% in August. Back in Asia, markets were steady during the week as investors in the...
According to the Canadian Census, Canada’s population was 35,151,728 in 2016. Over the previous five years, Canada’s population increased by 1.7 million (or 5%), a slightly lower rate than the 5.9% increase from 2006 to 2011. Some salient facts about Canada’s relatively rapid population growth. About two-thirds of Canada’s population growth from 2011 to 2016 was the result of net migration (the difference between the number of immigrants and emigrants). The natural increase in the population (i.e. the difference between the number of births and deaths) accounted for the remaining one-third. In coming years, Canada’s fu...
OVERNIGHT MARKETS AND NEWS Dec E-mini S&Ps (ESZ17 +0.15%) this morning are up +0.16% at a new record nearest-futures high and European stocks are up +0.45% at a 5-month high. Optimism that the Trump administration will pass a tax reform plan continues to underpin U.S. equity prices, while speculation that the ECB will remain accommodative for longer in lifting European stocks. An introductory speech by ECB President Draghi today at a conference in Frankfort shed no light on ECB plans, while the markets speculate that President Trump will insert a hawk to be the next Fed Chair. A person familiar with the process said that President Trump w...
We’re busy behind the scenes today here at Political Calculations, but to mark the occasion of new highs for the U.S. stock market, we thought we might revisit the past for the S&P 500 and its index predecessors. First, a quick look at the average value of the S&P 500 in each month since January 1871. Now that you’ve seen the chart, you might want to extract some of the data for certain periods from it. That’s where our The S&P 500 At Your Fingertips tool comes into play, because not only can we tell you what the value of the S&P 500 or its predecessor indices was in any of those months, we can also tell yo...
To invest in stocks, you need to know how to choose the ones that are best for you. Once you’ve chosen your stocks, decide how involved you want to be with managing your investments and take a look at the different options that are available to you. Audio Length: 00:04:21...
As Halloween nears, kids are choosing costumes to transform themselves into witches, baseball players and anything else they can imagine. In the spirit of Halloween, we thought it might be an appropriate time to describe the most popular costume on Wall Street, one which many companies have been donning and fooling investors with terrific success. Having gained over 65% in the last two years, the stock of McDonald’s Corporation (MCD) recently caught our attention. Given the sharp price increase for what is thought of as a low growth company, we assumed their new line of healthier menu items, mobile app ordering, and restaurant modernization...
For the last month we have been noting a dramatic divergence between Small Cap stock prices and their implied risk… We can only remember one such lengthy decoupling in recent history, and that did not end well… And of course this is all occurring as Small Cap earnings expectations plunge… But now, as Dana Lyons’ Tumblr details, there has only been one trading range in the history of the Russell 2000 tighter than the current one – and it immediately preceded a crash. As U.S. large-cap stocks continue to make new highs seemingly every day, the small-caps are doing something remarkable. Or, more accurately, it ...