Grab a parachute?

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 5, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Investors sold off shares of American business like crazy on Thursday and Friday. The stock markets fell ~5% depending on which index is your favorite to look at. Should we be grabbing parachutes to brace for a bigger fall? I don’t think so and here’s why… The news that triggered the sell off was higher than expected unemployment numbers that pushed the unemployment rate up to...
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Jumping June job losses

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 2, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Grim economic news today folks. In June the estimated number of job losses was 467,000. This number compared to economists’ estimates of 350,000 to be lost. This increase in unemployment pushed the overall unemployment rate up to 9.5% – the highest level since August of 1983. Not surprisingly this figure is roiling the financial markets. The reason is that consumer spending makes up...
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Another possible reason for the markets going sideways

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 1, 2009 in Blog | 1 comment Yesterday it occurred to me why the financial markets might have been going sideways for about 2 weeks…window dressing. What the heck is that? Window dressing is the age old practice of portfolio managers, who have had good performance in a quarter, selling their stocks toward the end of the quarter in order to lock in their gains. The end of the second quarter is an especially important...
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Results from the other GM

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 1, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments There is another important GM in the U.S. economy: General Mills. Today they reported results from their fiscal fourth quarter and they were excellent. Profits nearly doubled and they said that they not only were comfortable with analysts’ estimates for the upcoming fiscal year, but that they were upping estimates. The most important word in that previous sentence is “profits.”...
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Waffling economic data

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 30, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Good morning folks! Today brings a couple of economic data points worth considering. First, is that the Standard & Poors Case-Shiller home price index fell very slightly in April. This marks the third consecutive month of a very slight decline. Second, Consumer Confidence fell in June to 49.3 from a revised 54.9 in May. The Case-Shiller number is just not that useful because the data is so...
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The tale of mad Madoff who made off with so many $

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 29, 2009 in Blog | 1 comment By the time you read this most of you will have heard that Bernard Madoff was sentenced to the maximum allowed 150 years in prison. The sentence is far longer than that received by other corporate criminals over the last decade. I applaud the judge for the sentence. I have talked with many of my friends privately about the fact that his prison sentence needed to be severe. One of the big...
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Good news abounds

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 26, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Happy Friday everyone! Today’s post is about all of the good news that is permeating the press. Without further adieu… The savings rate in the United States hit its highest level in 15 years at 6.9%. This number is hugely important for the long-term health of the economy. What this means is that consumers are saving money and not spending it. That will lead to overall drop in the...
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