The Macro View

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• Super Bowl Stock Market Indicators Are Passé; Instead, Track The Dog Show

  By John Keefe | Feb 8, 2010 | 1 comment

  Years ago someone came up with a stock market indicator that emits a signal just once a year, but was fairly accurate: when teams from the old National Football League won the Super Bowl, the market tended to trade up for the year, something like three-fourths of the time. With the leagues merging, and teams moving, [...]

• Jobs Report, January 2010, Shows Lower Unemployment, But Weaknesses As Well

  By John Keefe | Feb 5, 2010 | 2 comments

  My blogging colleague Jill Schlesinger has weighed in on today’s jobs report, and finds the employment glass half-full. I’m not going to poke any holes in what she’s pointed out, but delve into another set of details from the same report, which give a less favorable view. People are unemployed longer now than in prior [...]

• Fed's Senior Loan Officer Survey: This Is What Economists Call A Headwind

  By John Keefe | Feb 2, 2010 | 0 comments

  Covering the final quarter of 2009, the Fed has published its Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices (I’ll refer to it as the January 2010 Survey). There are some positive aspects, in that bankers are not getting tougher on borrowers, but few are loosening the purse strings either. The bankers are looking [...]

• 4Q 2009 Earnings Race: The New Economy Is Winning

  By John Keefe | Feb 1, 2010 | 0 comments

  About half of the companies in the S&P 500, and 20 firms out of the 30 Dow Jones Industrials, have reported fourth-quarter 2009 earnings. There are no real standouts, other than a few that were flat on their backs but have managed to get up off the canvas and, of course, those that got a [...]

• Job Creation? A Counter-Cyclical Business? How About The Mafia?

  By John Keefe | Jan 28, 2010 | 1 comment

  I’m trying to be ironic, of course; I would never suggest anyone take up crime. But an association of Italian businesses, SOS Impresa, has released its latest annual commentary, and finds that the mob, at least the Italian arm, has fared pretty well in the downturn, making up about seven percent of GDP, and probably [...]

• Geithner Testimony On AIG Maddening, But The TARP Cop Explains A Lot

  By John Keefe | Jan 27, 2010 | 1 comment

  Protagonists from the TARP drama testified for five hours today before a House committee, and the headliners — Geithner and Paulson — stuck to their old stories and waved the flag about the rescue of AIG, as irate, indignant congressmen accused the two of selling out the U.S taxpayer with a “backdoor bailout” for Wall [...]

• A Second Nomination for Bernanke? You Bet

  By John Keefe | Jan 25, 2010 | 0 comments

  In the 21st century fully-wired economy, everything has a price and a market. Markets extend even to the realm of politics; if you wish you can express a point of view on who will win the 2010 senate races in Connecticut or North Dakota, the chance of an attack by China on Taiwan during 2010, [...]

• Obama (and Volcker) Speak, And The Markets Listen

  By John Keefe | Jan 21, 2010 | 0 comments

  President Obama made a brief but powerful proposal for additional bank regulation today, bringing the ideas of former Fed chairman Paul Volcker to the fore, and triggering sharp reaction in financial stocks. Large institutions would really have to pull in their horns, and smaller banks would be able to compete for retail business more effectively. [...]

• New Unemployment Claims: Like The Cough That Just Won't Go Away

  By John Keefe | Jan 21, 2010 | 1 comment

  The level of last week’s new unemployment claims were surprisingly high, at 482,000 versus forecasts of about 40,000 fewer. The higher claims reflect a snag in data collection, rather than a weakening in the economy, but when combined with the other data point of the day — leading indicators rising more than expected — they [...]

• For 4Q 2009, S&P 500 Earnings Are Set To Rise 6% Or More

  By John Keefe | Jan 19, 2010 | 1 comment

  StarMine Professional, an advanced analytical tool marketed by Thomson Reuters that collects and interprets the earnings forecasts made by industry analysts, is telling us that for the fourth quarter 2009, companies in the S&P 500 index (excluding the financials) will report an aggregate year-over-year increase of somewhere between six and nine percent. (Only a handful [...]

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