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Greek Debt Risk Still Present revisited
I won’t say I told you so, but I will highlight that just one week ago on 4 July, 2011 I said that “Greek debt risk [was] still present,” specifically saying: “Last week the Standard & Poors 500 Index surged 5.6% having almost everything to do with the possibility of a resolution to the Greek debt crisis. Most market participants felt that the situation was resolved. You might have noticed that I did not blog about the possible solutions being bandied about. Why? “Because frankly European solutions...
read moreImportant Global Regulators Call For More Regulation
Yesterday the President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, called for increased regulation of non-bank financial institutions. Specifically he was quoted as saying: “Strengthening resilience is absolutely essential given the fragility exhibited by the global economy.” He went on to ask for a, “serious advance in the way we regulate systemic institutions, including non-banking institutions. We have a lot of work to do on non-banking institutions in terms of reinforcing the non-cyclicality of...
read morewhat my intuition tells me now: Chinese Inflationary Pressures Just Won’t Go Away
Two pieces of news this weekend only serve to reinforce my view that China is experiencing massive inflation. Chinese inflationary pressures just won’t go away despite the Chinese governments efforts to rein them in. The first piece of news comes from China’s National Bureau of Statistics which reported that June 2011 inflation, as compared to June 2010, surged by 6.4%. In May, the same year over year comparison saw an inflation rate of 5.5%. As a point of comparison, the “official” Chinese governmental target for...
read moreAskMen.com Feature – Bad Investment Signs
Hello loyal fans and blog readers! Very good news, AskMen.com – that superstar Internet site with 15 million readers a month – is featuring Yours Truly on their home page, in their very popular Top 10 section, and in their finance and investing section. The name of the piece that I wrote is entitled, “Bad Investment Signs.” I consider this to be one of the more accessible pieces that I have written and I hope that you enjoy it. If you are visiting the JasonApolloVoss.com website or the What My Intuition Tells Me Now...
read moreBad News on U.S. Unemployment
Ah yes, the last 24 hours is one of those brief spans as an investor and a finance blog writer designed to make you look foolish. First we had good news on U.S. unemployment and now, today, we have bad news on U.S. unemployment. Yesterday ADP (the private payroll processing firm) said that there had been 157,000 private sector jobs created in June. Today, the official number of jobs created as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor says that non-farm payrolls only grew by 18,000 in June, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.2%. So...
read moreGood News on U.S. Unemployment
The late May and early June financial market sell off had many causes, but among the most important was the sputtering recovery in the U.S. jobs market. In fact, the data for about five weeks now has been mixed to down. Until now. Separate jobs figures this week indicate a job market that appears to be picking up steam. First, Automatic Data Processing (ADP) the massive payroll firm, reported that private sector employers added 157,000 jobs in the month of June. This compares to just 36,000 jobs created in the month of May. Second,...
read moreCredit Ratings Independence Tested
You might have heard that the debt of the country of Portugal was lowered to “junk” status on 5 July, 2011 by Moody’s, one of the three major international debt ratings agencies. Now various European governmental officials are criticizing the credit ratings agencies, challenging their independence and independent voice. Here are three quotes from European officials: Greek Foreign Minister Stavros Lambridinis said: “The agencies’ actions in the debt crisis [had] been ‘madness.’ ” German...
read moreShareholder Activism on the Rise
Because most companies are on a calendar year for financial reporting, their annual shareholder meetings and proxy statements are considered by their owners in the late spring to early summer. This annual meeting season has seen a rise in shareholder activism. Executive pay, in particular, has been a flash point for shareholders. Is it that shareholders have all of a sudden gotten interested in such issues? No. Shareholders have been interested in having a greater say in the affairs of the businesses they own for many years. But...
read moreWhat’s Going on in the Financial Markets Right Now?
Via e-mail a loyal reader of the blog asks a great series of questions that are an opportunity to address what’s going on in the financial markets right now. Hopefully he will forgive me for bringing his question into the public forum of the blog. Here’s what he writes: “I’m wondering why the market is zooming up lately. I’m too confused to reduce my question to a simple sentence. When I get confused, I spend a lot more time than usual reading whatever I can in search for answers. “You wrote how...
read moreGreek Debt Risk Still Present
Last week the Standard & Poors 500 Index surged 5.6% having almost everything to do with the possibility of a resolution to the Greek debt crisis. Most market participants felt that the situation was resolved. You might have noticed that I did not blog about the possible solutions being bandied about. Why? Because frankly European solutions to eurozone or European Union issues tend not to be ones of substance. Instead, they tend to push into the future a decision that could and should be made today. In fact, the Greek debt...
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