24 Mar 2005

Posted at 15:25h in The Friday Brief by
Since our last Brief a couple of weeks ago, inflation has taken center stage as the new hand-wringer.  On March 2nd oil blew through its most recent high of $52.88 reached on October 26th.  It now stands at $56.62 per barrel.  But the economy seems relatively unfazed.  That is until recently.  It now appears that businesses are beginning to pass along their commodity and labor prices to consumers.  On Tuesday, Greenspan seemed to confirm what many had been worrying about for months; that inflation is creeping back into the economy.

15 Nov 2002

Posted at 12:17h in The Friday Brief by
News that retail sales, excluding automobiles, improved by the most in six months sent the market averages up yesterday over 1.7% for the DOW and 2.5% for the S&P 500.  The .7% rise in sales was more than twice what economists had expected.  Treasuries fell and stocks rose as investors gained confidence that the consumer, hence the economy, might just be hanging on. 

28 Jun 2002

Posted at 13:47h in The Friday Brief by
As a thermometer, the stock market notifies us of serious problems in our world.  It provides an up-to-the-moment measure of the sum of all investors’ views of the financial world’s present condition as well as its near-term future prospects.  But, the market is no more to blame for our woes than the thermometer is to blame for the fever.  The market has told us for some time that our illnesses go deeper than a hangover after the ‘party’ of the late nineties.  Indeed, we have discovered serious diseases in our world and our capitalistic institutions that require attention.

21 Jun 2002

Posted at 13:56h in The Friday Brief by
The economy is getting better, albeit very slowly and with some mixed signals.  Investors now choose to concentrate individual company announcements waiting for proof at the company level that things are getting better.  They are not yet willing to simply trust the government compilations alone.  Corporations must begin to show improvement individually.