Commentary

Global Business Mobility Remains in Decline

Global Business Mobility, defined as GDP-weighted Google geolocation data of workplace less residential mobility for the 24 largest economies in the world, representing over two-thirds of global GDP, remains in decline despite a recent uptick.

Commentary

Global V-Shaped Recovery Stopped Dead in Its Tracks

At this stage we might have to discard the V-shape recovery hypothesis and perhaps look to a Nike swoosh or W-shaped recovery for both the US and the rest of the world.

Commentary

Dealing with a Runaway Market

Those of you who have been following us since 2010 will identify us a perma-bulls. Even in the depths of the ECRI 2012 /Hussman recession calls we were firmly bullish on the US economy and stock market – quite contrary to the popular consensus at the time.

Commentary

Mixed Signals from Labor Market

We keep getting good news about employment and the labor market. But we rarely see the less optimistic numbers.

Commentary

U.S Economy Remains Vulnerable

It is interesting to see the recent re-appearance of articles relating to flashing warning signals of recession.
Commentary

NBER’s Big-4 Indicators had a narrow miss

Reading through all the positive press about jobs numbers and so forth, its hard to comprehend that the 4 main indicators used by the National Buro of Economic Research (NBER) to determine US recessions, had a narrow miss recently.
Commentary

The SP-500 200-day average “Goodbye Kiss”

The SP-500 today has met back with its 200-day moving average after spending a “protracted period” of 46 trading days below it. Contrary to popular belief, history since 1972 shows this to be a bearish event, with more downside likely.
Commentary

Yellen Labor Dashboard Reaches Target

Shortly after taking up office, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen used her “jobs data dashboard” to justify the Fed’s easy money policies and to argue there’s still considerable slack in the labor market five years after the recession’s end. Seven of the nine gauges on this dashboard had not recovered to levels reached before the last recession, reinforcing her belief that the economy would need “extraordinary support” from the Federal Reserve for “some time to come.”
Commentary

Things That Go Bump in the Night

The U.S economy appears unstoppable right now. Just about every leading and co-incident indicator you can think of is pointing to positive growth. Among the hundreds of indicators we follow for our models on a daily basis, we have discovered a few that are displaying worrying trends and flagging a future recession. It should be pointed out that a handful of indicators flagging recession should not mean we have to push the panic button. A large raft of indicators all concurring is what you should be looking for, and right now a large raft of indicators is confirming economic growth.
Commentary

Valuation estimate of SP500 2015 returns : 2,246 target

The RecessionALERT Valuation Index (RAVI) is a multifactor valuation model that examines cyclically adjusted trailing SP-500 earnings (various multi-decade horizons), the SP-500 total-return index level, total stock market capitalization, Gross Domestic Product, non-financial corporate equities and liabilities, non-financial corporate business net-worth and percentage of investors allocation to stocks versus cash and bonds to determine 10, 5, 3, 2 and 1 year forecasts for the SP-500 Total Return Index (dividends re-invested).
Commentary

U.S. Economy Prints 32-month Low: Recession Risks Escalate

It's been 4 months since the 3rd "Summer Swoon" in this expansion when many commentators were trotting out recession scares and imminent collapses in the stock market. Since then the SP-500 has risen over 9%, peaking at 12% gains some weeks back. There is now an interesting divergence developing between the leading data (stock market, money supply, credit spreads etc.) that is implying positive expansion ahead and the co-incident data that is implying a drift toward possible recession.