Claims for the September 15 week are down only 3,000 to a 382,000 level that is above consensus for 373,000. The September 8 week is revised to 385,000 with roughly half of the week’s 18,000 jump due to Isaac. In my opinion people are too focused on week to week changes while on the other hand slowing down in the […]
New housing construction rose in August, boosted by the strongest pace of single-family home starts in more than two years that shows an improving U.S. real estate market – says the news headlines… Beginning construction climbed 2.3 percent to a 750,000 annual rate, less than forecast and restrained by a drop in the building of apartments, […]
Can additional QE help the jobs market? FED believes that it will. What the data tell us is something different. Let’s analyze… I’ve been frequently updating the U.S. Initial Jobless Claims chart and drawing attention to the slowing downward momentum on the jobless claims. In this post I added the timeline for past and present quantitative easing announcements. […]
One of the most important time series that I’m following is the employment situation in U.S. The other one is related to housing. In this post I’m updating my charts with the latest data. On Thursday initial jobless claims data was better than expected with 365,000. Expectation was a range between 365,000-380,000. What is the importance of this […]
Commodity currencies had a strong run since the beginning of 2009. With the help of metals, agriculture and mineral prices going higher Canadian, Australian and New Zealand dollar gained strength against U.S. dollar. Australian dollar reached 1.1 levels in May 2011. However, since then we have seen the commodity currencies entering into sideways corrections. Choppy […]
Gold is shining again… read the headlines over the weekend and today. I’ve updated metal charts in August and drew attention to possible strong breakouts. Now is the time for some long-term charts. This time I wanted to put Gold price in euros. The chart below is very powerful and gives a very important message. Since […]
Earlier during the month I wrote about CBOE VIX. Volatility is a good measure of market sentiment. Historical chart studies show 3 important levels for CBOE VIX. 50 level has been an extreme pessimism in the equity markets and 9 & 15 levels; extreme optimism. Over the past 5 years VIX couldn’t break below 15 levels. As a result, […]
Jobless claims rose by 4,000 for a second week to reach 372,000 in the period ended Aug. 18. Unemployment has been above 8 percent since February 2009 – – the longest stretch in the post-World War II era. Last week I drew attention to the loss of momentum on the U.S. Jobless Claims data. There […]
Low volatility periods are usually followed by high volatility and vice versa. Strong agricultural commodity prices are taking a breather but looks like trends are not over. Short-term sideways consolidations and low volatility ranges suggest upward breakouts and continuations. Soy Meal is one of the agricultural commodity that has been consolidating over the past one […]
Metals have been one of the exciting areas as we got closer to the end of this week. Precious metals moved higher and challenged important resistances. First, we saw a major breakout on Platinum followed by Palladium. Low volatility range breakouts are usually very powerful and are followed by strong moves. While a surge in volatility can […]
