The month of May continued to see stock market growth, with a backdrop of increasing political turmoil in the U.S. And the drum beat has carried the tune into June… with the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) near all-time highs. It appears less likely that a distracted President Trump will bring tax…
China released it’s May official PMI data, and overall the results are fairly benign. On the surface there wasn’t much to change the current view. The May Chinese manufacturing PMI was unchanged at 51.2 and the non-manufacturing PMI up +0.5 to 54.5 with services up +0.9 to 53.5. As well,…
The past month has been chalk full of corporate earnings announcements in the U.S., and more political drama. Earnings were largely positive, but with the stock market at historically high levels, apparently something bigger than earnings growth is needed for the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) to break out above the 2400 level….
July corn futures moved higher this week, closing up 4 ¼-cents per bushel week-on-week, finishing on Friday (5/5) at $3.70 ¾. Corn futures higher weekly close was entirely attributed to Friday’s session, which culminated with a 4 ¼-cents positive close that afternoon. This masked an otherwise disappointing week of price…
May corn futures moved higher this week, closing up 11 ½-cents per bushel week-on-week, finishing on Thursday (4/13) at $3.71. Corn futures managed to build on Monday’s 7 ½-cents higher close throughout the week despite what was initially viewed as a potentially Bearish April WASDE report released on 4/11. APRIL…
This post was written by Derek Benedet and Craig Basinger of Richardson GMP. Behavioral Finance combines behavioral and cognitive psychology theory with conventional economics and finance. Essentially it attempts to account or add the “human” element into understanding how the markets behave. While still a relative new area, it has…
Summary: Although the US major stock markets are at or near all-time highs, the economic data signals continued US and global growth. My viewpoint is that we are still in the early stages of what could be a multi-year growth cycle. Here’s some detail on my thought process: If you…
Equity markets continue to move higher on the hopes of fiscal stimulus in the U.S. But the pressure is on… Analysts are increasingly divided into bearish and bullish camps, as the politicians must now deliver on their promises to avoid disappointing the stock market. Stocks & Bonds Looking at the…
How Donald Trump’s protectionist trade policies (whether tariffs/border adjustment taxes) impact the US economy is really not well understood. And therefore they are hard to realistically value, especially since there is so much at stake and so many disparate stakeholders. We can thus far assume this: Although the proposal for…
Each money manager and/or investor has a process that helps them determine when, how and how much to invest. The process that I use starts by looking at whether the United States and/or global economy is expanding or contracting. In other words, I first try to determine whether the global…