Investment Watch Blog

by Paul Brandus The law finally seems to have caught up with President Trump. Not lawmen like special counsel Robert Mueller, or the G-men of the Southern District of New York—though they may soon catch up with him, for all I know. No, I’m talking about the law of unintended consequences, which has already overtaken the … Read more

By Lance Gaitan Some of those shutdown-delayed economic reports are finally coming in. The Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) should have most economic reports updated by the end of April. Last Friday, the BEA released the December Personal Income figures. With that, there’s some good news and some bad news… Spending … Read more

China chat log leak shows scope of surveillance A leak of around 364 million online records in a Chinese database, including private messages and ID numbers, has again highlighted the size and scope of Beijing’s mass surveillance system. The files show a wealth of information linked to online accounts, including GPS locations, file transfers, and … Read more

Wolf Richter wolfstreet.com, http://www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter Trade goes out-of-whack as Corporate America searches for cheap labor & tax benefits. Exports increase economic activity as measured by GDP; and imports do the opposite, they reduce GDP though they tend to increase corporate profits — or else why would Corporate America run its supply chains around the world? So … Read more

by Charles Hugh-Smith Trade is only one manifestation of much deeper economic insecurities and imbalances. China’s enormous successes–raising hundreds of millions out of poverty, landing a rover on the dark side of the moon, etc.–are well known. Less appreciated is China’s increasing vulnerability to financial instability arising from asymmetries that cannot be resolved by tweaking trade … Read more

by Michael Snyder Is the consumer debt bubble finally starting to burst?  If the latest numbers on delinquent credit card accounts are any indication, that appears to be precisely what is happening.  As I noted the other day, Americans currently have 480 million credit cards, and they are carrying 870 billion dollars worth of balances on those cards.  … Read more

by Michael Snyder The long-term trends that are gutting the U.S. economy continue to get even worse.  As you will see below, our goods trade deficit with the rest of the world hit a brand new record high in 2018, and most Americans simply do not understand why this is such a massive problem.  Every year, … Read more

Amanda Prestigiacomo from The Daily Wire reports, On Saturday night, National Review writer and podcast host Katherine Timpf ripped into media darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for the socialist’s widely criticized Green New Deal, which Timpf categorized as evidence that Ocasio-Cortez has completely “lost her marbles” and is “living in banana land.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnQkqoULdmg Read More/Source/Credit/FairUse: … Read more

Can we just admit it? This is not a REAL bull market. Stock buybacks, central banks, short squeeze. Not even the major institutions or retail investors are getting sucked in right now! What a terrible joke and yet, just look around. Look in the comments too. People are literally delusional. The stock market has risen, … Read more

via visualcapitalist: The global financial system has created massive wealth, but its centralized nature means the spoils have gone to the people who are best connected to the financial centers of the world. As global inequality continues to rise, how can wealth building tools become more accessible to the rest of the global population? Luckily, technological developments and … Read more

by howmuch Personal loans are an increasingly popular product, and people are using them to either consolidate some other type of debt, cover an emergency or fuel irresponsible consumption. That’s according to an in-depth study from LendingTree, which looked at anonymized data from customers in 2018. The study is packed with lots of great insights about … Read more

Store closures are looking to be a record high. So far in 2019, there have already been over 4000 stores closing. There’s no way to deny the economic slowdown. No, the economy is not doing well. Another wave of retail store closures coming. ‘No light at the end of the tunnel’ https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/another-wave-of-retail-store-closures-coming-no-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel.html Paperchase proposes store … Read more

When you start your day with some morning coffee and turn on the computer to see a giant anti-CNN billboard has made the news, then it’s a good day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtUPWL-NrEA Read More/Source/Credit/FairUse: https://ilovemyfreedom.org/anti-cnn-b…  

Collin Rugg from I Love My Freedom reports, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has recently been under fire for her massive carbon footprint. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9zplIES5MI Read More/Source/Credit/FairUse: https://ilovemyfreedom.org/aoc-respon…      

via Zerohedge: ADP has dramatically revised January’s job gains upward to +300k but February’s print came in at a slightly disappointing +183k (below the 190k exp). Small business (1-19) saw job losses (-8k) in February and Education (-2k) was the only industry to see job cuts. This is the biggest drop in Small Business jobs … Read more

via trueeconomics: As raging buybacks of shares and M&As have dropped the free float available in the markets over the recent years, Earnings per Share (EPS) continued to tank. Yet, S&P 500 valuations kept climbing: Source: Factset  As noted by the Factset: 1Q 2019 “marked the largest percentage decline in the bottom-up EPS estimate over the … Read more