Pay your mortgage & grab your scuba gear

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 24, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Good morning everyone! I have some not very good news to report. Santa Ana, California’s First American CoreLogic is reporting that 23% of homeowners in the U.S., or a staggering 10.7 million households, owe more on their house than the house is worth!! What’s more, as I reported yesterday, home prices continue to fall as home sellers keep dropping their prices to sell their houses....
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Home resales lift off

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 23, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Home resales in October were up 10.1% vs. a consensus expected increase of 2.3%. The gigantic outperformance has to be attributed to the first time home buyer tax credit that Congress voted to extend. What this means: While the number is certainly welcome and will likely drive the financial markets much higher, the fact is that the economy still is only doing well in the presence of big...
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Disagreement among climate change scientists

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 23, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Hello again – so glad that you have joined me here on ze blog! The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning about a number of e-mails that were hacked out of East Anglia University in the U.K. East Anglia is a clearing house for much of the climate change research being conducted all around the world. These e-mails, some dating back to 1996, demonstrate a lot less consensus on the...
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Quant out, qual in

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 23, 2009 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments Good morning folks! J.P. Morgan Asset Management has just published results of its annual European Equity Survey. This survey covered the 128 largest institutional investors in Europe. Of those 128, 102, managing over $3 trillion, said that they were more inclined than a year ago to favor qualitative approaches to investing than quantitative. Only 1 in 10 of the big investors said that they are...
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Economy sashays sideways

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 20, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Good morning everyone! I was traveling over the last several days so apologize for the lack of a post about a couple of important economic data points. Let’s get to them… Jobless Claims: Last week 505,000 newly unemployed folks applied for unemployment benefits. That total was flat with the previous weeks total. What’s more, jobless claims lasting longer than a week declined....
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Summary of the earnings season mostly passed

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 18, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Good morning everyone! I hope that each of you is doing well and gearing up for a relaxing and rejuvenating series of Holidays. We are in the 7th week of the 3rd quarter earnings season, meaning that it is just about over. How have the businesses that compose the S&P 500 performed? Of the companies reporting so far 80% have beaten analyst expectations for earnings per share and by a median...
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You heard it here first

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 15, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments I normally don’t post on Sundays but there is significant news coming out of the “Association of South East Asian Nations” (ASEAN) meetings. The Wall Street Journal states: “After meeting privately with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the leaders of the U.S. and Russia declared that ‘time is running out’ on Iran. They demanded an answer to a Russian...
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