Hurricane Jimena Offers a Good Example of What Might Lie Ahead

I just got back in town yesterday from a trip with my wife Cheri.  We were celebrating 10 great years together.  So, I am a little out of touch with the economic data that has come out last week.  Plus, this is a slow time of the year.  The real action in the stock market [...]

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Deceptively Great Stock Market

What motivates the stock market to go up?  Well, lately it doesn’t take anything of real substance. A great consumer confidence number could be the reason (even though the consumer confidence report gets the consensus of only 5,000 households), a reduction in the loss of jobs for a month(even though the Government accounting method greatly distorts [...]

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Financial Hurricane Getting Stronger

In 2006, I was writing to my clients in my private client letter about what I felt was occurring in the financial markets.  I described what I felt was coming as a Category 5 hurricane.  I think that I even named it Hurricane Greenspan at the time.  Although he is a distant memory, he had [...]

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Unemployment Reports Better than Expected – Are we in the clear?

 
The recession is declared to be over or over soon states many media outlets on Friday.  Unemployment was not as bad as expected and it appears that we are starting to lose less jobs. All of that is good news and it took the media and Wall Street no time at all to react positively. 
 
I [...]

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Has the Housing Market Bottomed?

“Worst of the housing recession is now behind us” declares one economist.  New home sales rose last month at the fastest clip in more than 8 years.  There is a good reason why home sales are increasing but there is another reason not to get too giddy over this economic data. 
First, prices are falling to [...]

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