Durable goods orders up and big

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 24, 2009 in Blog | 2 comments Good morning, good morning! I hope that this blog post finds each of you doing well. May’s orders for durable goods was up 1.8%. What the heck is a durable good? These are the big purchases that consumers make like computers and washing machines. Do you remember back on the blog I said that I thought that technology companies would lead the way out of the recession and that manufacturers...
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It may seem like the sky is falling

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 23, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Good day everyone! It may seem as if the sky is falling. After all, in the last several days the financial markets have nosedived…especially yesterday. However, I really don’t believe that things are as bad as they may seem. First of all, I warned several blog postings ago that there is always a dearth of business news toward the end of a quarter (the 2nd quarter ends June 30th)....
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Little trick to evaluate sea change

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 18, 2009 in Blog | 2 comments OK, first of all. Before reading this post, I have to tell you that the post immediately below on the details of regulatory overhaul is more important, so read that one first, then come back here. Jobless claims data came out today and they were up very modestly, by 3,000. So the number of unemployed increased again. This was completely expected. However, claims lasting more than one week...
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Details of regulatory overhaul are finally public

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 18, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Whew! OK, so my very first blog post last fall I said that the regulatory structure of the United States needed a big overhaul. And lo nearly 8 months later details of such a plan have finally been made public. Before talking about the details, President Barack Obama sums up the need for these regulations very succinctly: “Millions of Americans who have worked hard and behaved responsibly...
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Results from FEDEX

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 18, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Federal Express reported results yesterday and I wanted to highlight their numbers here on the blog to demonstrate why it is important to parse a business’s results. This is especially true because the tendency of media outlets is to emphasize the status quo. And the current economic status quo is that things are garish, ugly and scary. So of course that is what is reported. First of all...
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Recent economic data

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 16, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Hello everyone! Today brought some interesting economic news. For example, housing starts were up 17.2% vs. an expected rise of 7.0%. Housing starts represent the building of new houses. First, the actual number up vs. the predicted number up is significant. It is extremely rare that you see such an extreme outperformance in an economic statistic. Second, builders frequently begin building...
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Proposed Republican regulatory reform

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 12, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments A week ago Wednesday loyal reader Nate asked me to comment on a news story which detailed House Republicans’ plans of regulatory reform. I apologize Nate but it has taken me awhile to get to the story. In summary, House Republicans proposed: 1 Failing companies would be directed into bankruptcy rather than bailouts. 2 The Federal Reserve would lose its ability to regulate the financial...
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