Investment Watch Blog

Wolf Richter wolfstreet.com, http://www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter Welcome to the Big Club of Saturation & Decline. For the month of December, light new-vehicle sales in China plunged 13%, compared to a year ago, to 2.23 million vehicles, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) announced on Monday. Sales through June had risen 6%, but then came July, and … Read more

by Charles Hugh-Smith If we follow the logic and evidence presented in these seven points, we are forced to conclude that the fractures in France, Germany and the EU are widening by the day. When is a nation-state no longer a functional state? It’s an interesting question to ask of the European nation-states trapped in … Read more

by Michael Snyder We continue to get more confirmation that the global economy is slowing down substantially.  On Monday, it was China’s turn to surprise analysts, and the numbers that they just released are absolutely stunning.  When Chinese imports and exports are both expanding, that is a clear sign that the global economy is running … Read more

by Michael Snyder Does Gillette really think that they are going to sell more razors to men after millions of men watch their horrific new ad that is essentially an all-out assault on masculinity?  The new ad is entitled “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be”, and within the first few seconds the term “toxic masculinity” … Read more

by John Coumarianos Are technology stocks cheap? It seems like a strange question to ask as the market drops on news that Apple has indicated weaker future sales. I also doubted whether Facebook’s price reflected its business value in the middle of this past summer. I thought fair value for the business was around $140 per share assuming it … Read more

via @StockBoardAsset: China, Japan, & South Korea have been leading the recent market swoon Baltic Dry & Tanker rates fading hard in the first few weeks into 2019, not an optimistic sign for global trade lot of headlines from China Global Exchange Rates YTD. In the next few weeks, I will be visiting one of these … Read more

EU is willing to extend the BREXIT but will not change the agreement. What the EU wants is for May to convince her government to go along with the deal. The government shutdown might not be what everyone thinks it is. Trump promised to drain the swamp, this is the economic swamp that is a … Read more

The NYT article is turning out to be a big fail, they are showing the FBI was corrupt, Brennan was the conductor of the dossier, the world is catching on and the [DS] is digging their hole deeper and deeper. Mueller report is going to be a flop and the [DS] knows it, this is … Read more

by visualcapitalist An estimated 90% of world trade is facilitated by maritime shipping, and as trade volumes continue to increase, the world’s busiest ports continue to grow larger and more efficient to meet demand. In fact, in just the last four years, the median annual volume of the top 50 ports jumped from 5.49 to 5.86 … Read more

via mishtalk: German, French, and Italian industrial production collapsed in November. Italy GDP is negative for 3rd Quarter. Italy GDP Italy’s GDP was negative for the third quarter. Gross domestic product (GDP) in the euro zone’s third largest economy fell by 0.1 percent in July-September due to weaker domestic demand, statistics bureau ISTAT said, the first … Read more

via Bloomberg: The 14 percent drop in the S&P 500 Index last quarter has big implications for state and local pension funds, which probably saw the value of their assets fall by about 7 percent. Investors with the benefit of a long-term horizon have the ability to ignore market dips, and pension funds are among the longest-term … Read more