Investment Watch Blog

https://twitter.com/OccupyWisdom/status/1004522695860674560 1999 – Why profits don’t matter for IPOs The Wall Street Journal has a heads-up article in Monday’s paper that says the percentage of companies going public this year that aren’t yet profitable is higher than at any time since the dot-com bubble. (The article, here, is available for free.) The paper notes that there are … Read more

Ouch. Investors betting against Tesla lost more than $1 billion Wednesday, according to estimates from financial technology firm S3 Partners. Tesla bears have lost nearly $5 billion in mark-to-market losses since 2016, S3 finds. The electric car maker is one of the most heavily shorted stocks in the U.S., as well as the most heavily … Read more

via goldtelegraph: The official news bulletins on the economy are positive. Officially, unemployment is at 3.8 percent, a low not seen in two decades. The big picture looks great as companies are making record profits and consumers are spending again. But for some people, a 9 to 5 job is still a dream. Many have become … Read more

It’s the stock buybacks. Companies are expected to buy back 10% of their market cap this year. They are borrowing money to do it. Likely be a huge credit crisis and crash in the future from it, but enjoy the ride while it lasts. What Is Driving The Stock Bull Market Higher? The performance of … Read more

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute, When governments subsidize goods and services — or provide them directly through government-owned institutions — the effect is to lower the price to consumers, thus increasing demand. Put another way: if the price of, say, a college education is near-zero to the consumer, then consumers are likely … Read more

via Economica : Population demographics in the developed world paint a grim economic picture. Rapidly aging populations and plummeting birth rates mean drastic declines in productive population and a commensurate drop in energy consumption. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint), we know what happens when this occurs over a longer time horizon, as it has … Read more

via The Future of Freedom Foundation: “What do you have to lose?” Such was the grand sum total of Donald Trump’s appeal to minority voters in his presidential campaign. Essentially, “Yes, I have nothing to offer you and don’t care about you, but how well are you doing having voted for Democrats decade after decade?” … Read more

by Michael Snyder One of the primary reasons why the middle class in America is disappearing so rapidly is because of skyrocketing health care costs.  Families all over the country are being absolutely crushed by extremely high health insurance premiums, ridiculously high deductibles and very large out-of-pocket expenses that were not anticipated.  In fact, medical bills are the … Read more

by Michael Snyder We haven’t seen anything like this since Hawaii first became a state back in 1959. Kilauea began erupting on May 3rd, and it hasn’t stopped rumbling yet. In fact, authorities are telling us that Hawaii has been struck by “over 12,000 earthquakes” during the last 30 days. That is an extraordinary amount of shaking, and … Read more

Venezuela recovers its gold from Citigroup. Argentina is trying to move away from the central bank. The IMF is pushing austerity on the people and the people are angry. There are now more job openings than there are unemployed people to fill them. So then why don’t we see people switching jobs and want don’t … Read more

via Jill Mislinski Here is a summary of the four market valuation indicators we update on a monthly basis. The Crestmont Research P/E Ratio (more) The cyclical P/E ratio using the trailing 10-year earnings as the divisor (more) The Q Ratio, which is the total price of the market divided by its replacement cost (more) The … Read more

Wolf Richter wolfstreet.com, http://www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter “Veterans in this industry are saying this is the best freight market they have ever seen.” But shippers struggle with rising costs. Orders for Class 8 trucks – the heavy trucks that haul trailers across the US – surged 114% in May, compared to a year ago. With 35,200 orders, it … Read more

By Lance Gaitan You usually find me sifting through important economic data and analyzing how it’ll affect the Treasury market. That’s my wheelhouse. We’ll get to that stuff soon, after we talk about the forces (political and otherwise) that moved the markets. Last week, political volatility at home and abroad left its mark on stocks, commodities, and … Read more

by Simon Black This morning after my plane landed from Bangkok, I was having breakfast in the business lounge in Sydney and glanced at the local paper, The Australian. The front-page headline told the story of yet another banking scandal: “Cartel case nets six bankers” The article was about how six prominent investment bankers in Australia colluded … Read more