Maybe, in some strange, new world not yet discovered, the spectacular gains in pieces of paper known as stocks is considered awesome and grand.
Oh, wait, that's this world.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 22,000 mark just over a month ago on September 11. Since then, there have been 18 sessions in which the Dow finished higher, as opposed to just seven in which it closed lower. Additionally, the down days were much smaller, percentage-wise, than the up days.
Party on!
At the Close, Monday, October 16, 2017:
Dow: 22,956.96, +85.24 (+0.37%)
NASDAQ: 6,624.00, +18.20 (+0.28%)
S&P 500: 2,557.64, +4.47 (+0.18%)
NYSE Composite: 12,359.52, +7.52 (+0.06%)
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Sunday, October 15, 2017
Markets Finish Week On Positive Note
Stocks shrugged off Thursday's minor descent with a ho-hum advance in Friday's session, the Dow ending the week at record highs and its fifth straight week of gains.
After PPI and CPI data showed inflation on the rise, market participants were content to trade upwards, as inflation expectations are supposedly a key to the Fed keeping their promise to raise interest rates again this year, purportedly by 25 basis points in December.
The Fed has been desperately seeking consumer inflation, targeting two percent, but prices have remained stubbornly low according to the widely-used government data.
So long as inflation continues to rise and unemployment remains at historically-low levels, the Fed sees a path to higher interest rates and a cushion against any economic headwinds.
Of course, the Fed needs to continue their narrative for normalization of interest rates, which have been one percent or lower for almost all of the 21st century and have been in that range continuously since the crash of 2008.
All of the major indices ended the week with gains, albeit small ones of less than 1/2 percent.
The level of complacency in the financial community is mind-boggling.
At the Close, Friday, October 13, 2017:
Dow: 22,871.72, +30.71 (+0.13%)
NASDAQ: 6,605.80, +14.29 (+0.22%)
S&P 500: 2,553.17, +2.24 (+0.09%)
NYSE Composite: 12,352.00, +13.26 (+0.11%)
For the week:
Dow: +98.05 (+0.43%)
NASDAQ: +15.62 (+0.24%)
S&P 500: +3.84 (+0.15%)
NYSE Composite: +34.31 (+0.28)
After PPI and CPI data showed inflation on the rise, market participants were content to trade upwards, as inflation expectations are supposedly a key to the Fed keeping their promise to raise interest rates again this year, purportedly by 25 basis points in December.
The Fed has been desperately seeking consumer inflation, targeting two percent, but prices have remained stubbornly low according to the widely-used government data.
So long as inflation continues to rise and unemployment remains at historically-low levels, the Fed sees a path to higher interest rates and a cushion against any economic headwinds.
Of course, the Fed needs to continue their narrative for normalization of interest rates, which have been one percent or lower for almost all of the 21st century and have been in that range continuously since the crash of 2008.
All of the major indices ended the week with gains, albeit small ones of less than 1/2 percent.
The level of complacency in the financial community is mind-boggling.
At the Close, Friday, October 13, 2017:
Dow: 22,871.72, +30.71 (+0.13%)
NASDAQ: 6,605.80, +14.29 (+0.22%)
S&P 500: 2,553.17, +2.24 (+0.09%)
NYSE Composite: 12,352.00, +13.26 (+0.11%)
For the week:
Dow: +98.05 (+0.43%)
NASDAQ: +15.62 (+0.24%)
S&P 500: +3.84 (+0.15%)
NYSE Composite: +34.31 (+0.28)
Friday, October 13, 2017
Stocks Take a Breather
Stocks did not close at record highs Thursday.
Shocking!
At the Close, Thursday, October 12, 2017:
Dow: 22,841.01, -31.88 (-0.14%)
NASDAQ: 6,591.51, -12.04 (-0.18%)
S&P 500 2,550.93, -4.31 (-0.17%)
NYSE Composite: 12,338.74, -23.32 (-0.19%)
Shocking!
At the Close, Thursday, October 12, 2017:
Dow: 22,841.01, -31.88 (-0.14%)
NASDAQ: 6,591.51, -12.04 (-0.18%)
S&P 500 2,550.93, -4.31 (-0.17%)
NYSE Composite: 12,338.74, -23.32 (-0.19%)
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Adam Smith, Grains, Silver, the PPI, and Deflation
For months, if not years, Federal Reserve officials have been harping on the absence of inflation during their era of unrelenting quantitative easing (money printing). This phenomenon has baffled the pointed heads of the Fed, since it would be only natural for prices to rise with the advent of scads of fresh money hitting the market.
The problem for the Fed is simple. Their transmission lines have been blunted for the past eight years, with their easy money stopped at the bank level, never actually reaching commercial or consumer participants in the general economy. Thus, stocks, bonds and various currencies have experienced outsize gains - those assets experiencing above average appreciation, i.e., inflation - while the more mundane elements of the vast economic landscape have wallowed in a regime of low inflation, disinflation or outright deflation.
As the Fed prepares to sell off assets from its enormous ($4.4 trillion) balance sheet, the matter of price inflation has once again become a major concern. Fed officials disingenuously mutter on and about wage growth, seeking to convey the impression that they are somehow concerned for the welfare of workers (labor). Wage growth, which has stagnated since the year 1999 if not earlier, is a false argument for inflation. what the Fed wants is price inflation for everyday goods, commercial mid-production products, and base goods.
It's not happening.
In his magnificent tome, "The Wealth of Nations," author Adam Smith takes pains - and many pages - in discussion of nominal prices, concerning himself in his writings with the price of corn. Scholars rightfully insist that Smaith's intention was to show how prices in base goods are more important a measurement of economic health than pricing in currency.
With that knowledge, variations in currencies and base grains - wheat, corn, rice - can serve as an impressive measurement of real inflation, since the cost of producing marketable grain from hectares of farm land is somewhat non-variable, considering that the labor and fuel costs are relatively static.
In other words, since farmers are paying their hired hands roughly the same wage and the cost of operating the machinery to harvest the grains is also somewhat static, the price of finished grain in terms of currencies of choice - in his case, silver, can determine whether the environment is inflationary, deflationary, or neutral.
This morning's release of PPI data showed an increase of 0.4% month-over-month and a rate of 2.6% year-over-year. The increase puts the PPI at a level last seen in 2012. CPI (Consumer Price Index) remains mired in mediocrity, at a rate of 1.9% annually. That is the final inflation number, though it is hardly a reliable one.
Since the US economy is so vast and dynamic, it's difficult to get a grip on the overall flow of anything, though it's fairly certain that the inflation rate is higher than what the government is reporting.
On the other hand, taking into account Adam Smith's famous measurements, grains - the basis for much of what Americans and animals of husbandry eat - have crashed in recent weeks and months, along with silver, which has been rangebound for the past four years and is thus a benign measurement, useful in actual discussions of nominal prices.
On that basis, the Fed is likely to be disappointed in their inflation expectations. Since their data is so badly maligned, it cannot be trusted, while Adam Smith's has stood the tests of time.
It's deflation, as far as the eye can see, no matter what the Federal Reserve officials - who have proven, time and again, to be nothing more than dunces with degrees - try to squeeze out of the economy. The deflation is especially evident considering the levels of price suppression in silver. Were silver to rise to somewhat more realistic levels, the cost of buying a bushel or wheat or corn or rice would fall substantially.
Stocks made new all-time highs on Wednesday, but are pulling back in early trading Thursday morning.
The problem for the Fed is simple. Their transmission lines have been blunted for the past eight years, with their easy money stopped at the bank level, never actually reaching commercial or consumer participants in the general economy. Thus, stocks, bonds and various currencies have experienced outsize gains - those assets experiencing above average appreciation, i.e., inflation - while the more mundane elements of the vast economic landscape have wallowed in a regime of low inflation, disinflation or outright deflation.
As the Fed prepares to sell off assets from its enormous ($4.4 trillion) balance sheet, the matter of price inflation has once again become a major concern. Fed officials disingenuously mutter on and about wage growth, seeking to convey the impression that they are somehow concerned for the welfare of workers (labor). Wage growth, which has stagnated since the year 1999 if not earlier, is a false argument for inflation. what the Fed wants is price inflation for everyday goods, commercial mid-production products, and base goods.
It's not happening.
In his magnificent tome, "The Wealth of Nations," author Adam Smith takes pains - and many pages - in discussion of nominal prices, concerning himself in his writings with the price of corn. Scholars rightfully insist that Smaith's intention was to show how prices in base goods are more important a measurement of economic health than pricing in currency.
With that knowledge, variations in currencies and base grains - wheat, corn, rice - can serve as an impressive measurement of real inflation, since the cost of producing marketable grain from hectares of farm land is somewhat non-variable, considering that the labor and fuel costs are relatively static.
In other words, since farmers are paying their hired hands roughly the same wage and the cost of operating the machinery to harvest the grains is also somewhat static, the price of finished grain in terms of currencies of choice - in his case, silver, can determine whether the environment is inflationary, deflationary, or neutral.
This morning's release of PPI data showed an increase of 0.4% month-over-month and a rate of 2.6% year-over-year. The increase puts the PPI at a level last seen in 2012. CPI (Consumer Price Index) remains mired in mediocrity, at a rate of 1.9% annually. That is the final inflation number, though it is hardly a reliable one.
Since the US economy is so vast and dynamic, it's difficult to get a grip on the overall flow of anything, though it's fairly certain that the inflation rate is higher than what the government is reporting.
On the other hand, taking into account Adam Smith's famous measurements, grains - the basis for much of what Americans and animals of husbandry eat - have crashed in recent weeks and months, along with silver, which has been rangebound for the past four years and is thus a benign measurement, useful in actual discussions of nominal prices.
On that basis, the Fed is likely to be disappointed in their inflation expectations. Since their data is so badly maligned, it cannot be trusted, while Adam Smith's has stood the tests of time.
It's deflation, as far as the eye can see, no matter what the Federal Reserve officials - who have proven, time and again, to be nothing more than dunces with degrees - try to squeeze out of the economy. The deflation is especially evident considering the levels of price suppression in silver. Were silver to rise to somewhat more realistic levels, the cost of buying a bushel or wheat or corn or rice would fall substantially.
Stocks made new all-time highs on Wednesday, but are pulling back in early trading Thursday morning.
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Economics - and Nobel Prizes - Aren't What They Used To Be
In 1946, with the world recovering from the devastation of a global war, Henry Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson. It's become a classic of Austrian Economics.
There's a free PDF HERE, that would be a good place for the 98% (probably more) of the population that has either never even heard of Henry Hazlitt nor read any of his material.
Since then, the study and application of economics has taken a path which mirrors that of the value of the US dollar. In other words, it's taken a fairly precipitous decline.
So it is that this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for economics is one Richard Thaler, a pop psychologist masquerading as an intelligent person. Thaler's prize-winning contribution to the field stems from a 2015 book he had published, called Misbehaving. Thaler's enormous discovery was that people don't always react to economic conditions in the ways Keynesian economists expect.
That revelation is so deep (sarcasm) that Thaler is being mocked in the comments section of an article in that bastion of higher learning, Yahoo! Finance.
It's not necessary to go into how insipid and uninspiring Thaler's work is. All that is necessary to understand the superficial nature of his "scholarship" is that he has been bestowed with the title of father of behavioral economics, whatever that's supposed to mean.
Now wonder central banks control the world. The rest of us are stupid.
At the Close, Monday, October 9, 2017:
Dow: 22,761.07, -12.60 (-0.06%)
NASDAQ: 6,579.73, -10.45 (-0.16%)
S&P 500: 2,544.73, -4.60 (-0.18%)
NYSE Composite: 12,293.95, -23.74 (-0.19%)
There's a free PDF HERE, that would be a good place for the 98% (probably more) of the population that has either never even heard of Henry Hazlitt nor read any of his material.
Since then, the study and application of economics has taken a path which mirrors that of the value of the US dollar. In other words, it's taken a fairly precipitous decline.
So it is that this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for economics is one Richard Thaler, a pop psychologist masquerading as an intelligent person. Thaler's prize-winning contribution to the field stems from a 2015 book he had published, called Misbehaving. Thaler's enormous discovery was that people don't always react to economic conditions in the ways Keynesian economists expect.
That revelation is so deep (sarcasm) that Thaler is being mocked in the comments section of an article in that bastion of higher learning, Yahoo! Finance.
It's not necessary to go into how insipid and uninspiring Thaler's work is. All that is necessary to understand the superficial nature of his "scholarship" is that he has been bestowed with the title of father of behavioral economics, whatever that's supposed to mean.
Now wonder central banks control the world. The rest of us are stupid.
At the Close, Monday, October 9, 2017:
Dow: 22,761.07, -12.60 (-0.06%)
NASDAQ: 6,579.73, -10.45 (-0.16%)
S&P 500: 2,544.73, -4.60 (-0.18%)
NYSE Composite: 12,293.95, -23.74 (-0.19%)
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