US ECONOMY (October 18th 2012): Unemployment Claims Spike - but DON'T TRUST THE HEADLINES, the TRUTH is less exciting

Last week we wrote an article on the subject of Weekly Jobless Claims, suggesting that the 339k reading (a multi-year low) might be considered the first sign that QE3 was being felt in the labour statistics. You can read that here. However, it was soon made clear that part of this was a technical difficulty, with some of the claims not being recorded in that data...

Read More

US ECONOMY (October 16th 2012): Capacity Utilization Rate

The US Capacity Utilization Rate is an indicator to be respected. Very few monthly economic indicators show long term trends in the US economy quite as simply as the CUR. It is exceptionally useful for providing noise-free, long term bullish and bearish cycles in the US economy, when viewed on longer timeframes. If I had to give a complete novice ONE MONTHLY...

Read More

US ECONOMY (October 11th 2012): US Jobs and Unemployment Improvment As We Approach US Election? Believe the Stats, is the Recovery Real?

With the US Presidential election just weeks away, the various US unemployment statistics have come into very sharp focus from the wider public and mainstream media. The economy, we're told, will be the most important factor as American voters head to the polls to elect either Mitt Romney or re-elect Barack Obama for a second term. Democrats might, in that case, be flooding...

Read More

EQUITIES MARKET ANALYSIS (October 6th 2012): How we use the Bullish Percentage Indicator, What is BPNYA saying about the Rally?

  HOW WE USE THE BULLISH PERCENT INDICATOR   Readers of our 2011 and 2012 (so far) Reviews will notice we like to use the Bullish Percentage indicator in our analysis for MEDIUM TERM market trends. 2011 was a notoriously difficult year for attempting to manage portfolios in the face of volatility. While we're big fans of using trends in Economic Analysis...

Read More

GLOBAL ECONOMY (October 1st 2012): Resurgent Global PMIs - Old Trend is Ending, But How Much is Already Priced In?

The global PMI reports released each month from Markit, ISM, HSBC and JP Morgan, all serve as key indicators in our view of global macroeconomics trends. PMI SO FAR THIS YEAR It has been global PMI data which has kept us most concerned this year. On February 22nd, coinciding with a breakdown in market breadth indicators, PMI reports from Europe started to reverse their...

Read More