Nothing appears to be in the way of Salesforce.com’s (NYSE: CRM) growth. After another stellar quarter performance, it is fairly evident that competitors, including the likes of Microsoft and Oracle, are not coming close to this giant. Here is an interesting infographic, courtesy MotleyFool.com that shows how Salesforce has expanded its market share position in every category over the year. Salesforce’s Financials For the second quarter of the year, Salesforce’s revenue grew an impressive 26% over the year to $2.56 billion, above analyst projection of $2.51 billion. Revenue growth was driven by 17% growth in Sales Cloud revenues. Addi...
The US dollar was under pressure but managed to stage a comeback. The upcoming week features rate decisions in Australia, Canada, and the euro-zone, as well as other events. Here are the highlights for the upcoming week. Yellen’s lack of hawkishness in Jackson Hole continued weighing on the US dollar. North Korea fired a missile over Japan and this triggered a risk-off reaction, helping the Japanese yen. However, positive US data, such as 3% GDP growth, gave a boost to the greenback allowed it to recover. EUR/USD shot up above 1.20 but dropped quite quickly as well. Despite higher inflation, the common currency dropped due to report...
The University of Michigan Final Consumer Sentiment for August came in at 96.8, up from the July Final reading of 93.4. Investing.com had forecast 97.4. Surveys of Consumers chief economist, Richard Curtin, makes the following comments: Consumer confidence has remained at a very favorable level, although slipping somewhat from mid-month. The Sentiment Index has been higher during the first eight months of 2017 than in any year since 2000, which was the peak year of the longest expansion in U.S. history. The renewed strength in 2017 was mainly due to consumers’ favorable assessments of their own financial situations. Lows in unemployme...
WTI Crude Oil The WTI Crude Oil market initially fell, but we turned around to form a massive bullish candle for the week. We ran into a bit of trouble at $47.50, and it looks like the sellers may return relatively soon. This explosive move was due to the effects of Harvey in Texas, but I suspect that this is a short-term move at best. I’m looking for exhaustive candle to start selling again, and have no interest in buying. With today’s nonfarm payroll announcement, we will probably see a significant amount of volatility, so keep that in mind. I’m waiting for a daily exhaustive candle to start shorting again as this market continues the...
The headline seasonally adjusted BLS job growth was below expectations. The internals say this is not a good report. Analyst Opinion of the BLS Employment Situation The household and establishment surveys were poorly sync’d this month. This was a crummy report – you know that when manufacturing and construction were the primary drivers in a service economy. Part of the explanation from Sentier Research: The Census Bureau conducts nationally representative household surveys used to generate important statistics such as the monthly unemployment rate, housing characteristics, consumer expenditures, etc. All of these surveys are based...
Companies added 165,000 workers last month, the US Labor Department reports.The gain was modestly below Econoday.com’s consensus forecast. But the year-over-year trend held steady in August, suggesting that the two-year slowdown that began in the first half of 2015 may be stabilizing at a lesser-but-still healthy growth rate. From the perspective of this week’s ADP Employment Report, a private estimate of monthly changes in the labor market, today’s government data looks disappointing. By ADP’s reckoning, company payrolls increased by a seasonally adjusted 237,000 last month – the strongest monthly gain for this series since Marc...
The monthly jobs report came out, and although it was a little soft, equity reaction was initially fairly positive. It’s tough to say where these things wind up at the end of the day, because ultimate daily direction often has little correspondence to the initial knee-jerk. As I am typing this, the ES is up 6, having pushed cleanly above its broken trendline yesterday, circled in red (so much for THAT reversal………) Gold initially had a nice double-digit pop, but as I am typing this (I have to keep using that as a qualifier), gold is up only five dollars. Clearly the forex markets are still digesting this jobs news and figuring out what...
It must be something about the end of Summer, but as we noted in our employment report preview yesterday, economists have historically done a horrible job predicting the change in Non-Farm Payrolls for the month of August. Using our Economic Indicator Database, which is available to all Bespoke Institutional clients, we screened for every Non-Farm Payrolls report dating back to 1998 to see how the initial report came in relative to expectations. As shown in the table below, the initial print of the August report has come in weaker than expected in sixteen of the last twenty years, and the average spread between the actual first reported n...
While the excuses are already flowing for the big miss in August’s payrolls, markets are reacting with currencies the biggest factor. Yields are now unchanged… The dollar dumped immediately and precious metals spiked, bond yields fell marginally and while Nasdaq jumped a little initially, stocks are now all modestly lower…...