With uncanny contrarian timing, the Washington Post heralded the year-end rally in its Saturday edition with the headline, “No Santa Claus Rally for Wall St.” To be fair, the credit for this epitaphic declaration goes to the headline writer; the article itself was specifically about the market’s failure to rally last week, and the story writer was entirely innocent of any ill-considered prediction about the week to come. Nevertheless, the market reversed on cue, bouncing off the prior week’s lows Monday…
First of all, we would be amiss if we didn’t congratulate our readers, and especially our subscribers, on staying cool and collected yesterday. It’s very easy to get swept up in the panic and the buzz and forget that the S&P 500 is only 20% off its all time high from back in October. A 20% decline is standard bear market fare; a few large companies failing is standard bear market fare; and despite what all the financial media are…
The authors of The Liscio Report – a favorite of Alan Abelson and Barry Ritholtz – are now blogging, and they’re off to a fantastic start. This recent post surveys the correlations between Presidents, presidential party, and various economic indicators:
Not to spoil the suspense too much, but here are the basic conclusions. Since Franklin Roosevelt’s third term (1941–44), Democrats have generally presided over faster growth and stronger stock markets than Republicans; Republican administrations have been friendlier for disinflation and the bond…
Forgive us a short rant this evening. This country is sick. When the three main engines of growth – consumer spending, real estate, and financial services – are broken, it’s just not possible to make any economic progress. And for just a moment, let’s think about how pathetic those key sectors really are.
Cogent analysis of our per capita consumption requires some historical knowledge, since no contemporary people compares with our particular level of decadence. At least the Romans had some…
Make sure the fortune that you seek
Is the fortune that you need.
- Ben Harper, “Diamonds on the Inside”
Typically, the biggest impact GDP has on the life of an options trader is the response of the markets to each new release of quarterly GDP estimates. But the whipsawing knee-jerk reactions of the markets to economic datapoints are immature and shallow, at best; traders who care only about the symbolic and immediately tradable impact of economic data are equally short-sighted. So forgive…
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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