Stress tests for European banks completed

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 23, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments Stock markets started collapsing at the beginning of May after investors suddenly started paying attention to the debt crisis that was plaguing European banks.  Specifically those rascally Greeks sent folks into fear paroxysms.  As a part of calming investor stomachs the Europeans stated that they would undertake “stress testing” of the European banking system.  The goal was...
read more

Milestone for many

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 21, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments This morning President Obama signed into law the financial overhaul bill that has been debated for almost his entire Presidency.  This marks a milestone for many. First, the investing public finally gets protections that are essential.  With these protections in place the faith of the individual investor can begin to be restored.  While it may not consciously affect individual investors...
read more

A game of chicken

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 20, 2010 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 3 comments Much start-stop strangeness is happening in the stock markets.  Ostensibly this is due to companies reporting earnings that either exceed or are in line with expectations; yet whose revenues fail to excite.  This is the very same issue I wrote about over a year ago as the U.S. economy started to recover.  See my post on “operating leverage” for the full story. Companies can...
read more

Retail sales number for June

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 14, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments Good morning everyone. The news is that U.S. retail sales were down 0.5% in June from their levels in May.  This level compares to an expectation from economists of a 0.3% drop.  However, if you exclude food and energy prices, both of which fluctuate dramatically, then retail sales were up 0.1%. Analysis: My preference is to look at the retail sales figure sans energy prices.  Energy prices go...
read more

The Greeks have done it

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 13, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments Several weeks ago I gave the heads up that the Greek government announced its intentions to attempt to raise more money by the issuance of more debt.  This was a very closely scrutinized event.  If the Greeks failed then it would be a vote of no confidence from the international financial community.  If the Greeks were to succeed it would be a vote of confidence that the worst of Europe’s...
read more

The debt of Portugal has been downgraded

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 13, 2010 in Blog | 1 comment Fears of economic meltdown in Europe’s PIGS economies remain, as Moody’s downgraded the debt of Portugal yesterday by two notches, down to an A1 rating.  [PIGS is short for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, and is an apt name given the huge appetite for debt in those countries.]  Importantly, Moody’s has designated the rating as “stable.”  In other words,...
read more

A piece of news you may have missed

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 13, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments You may have missed the news that the last of China’s Big Four banks, Agricultural Bank of China, is going public.  The reason that this news is important is that the significance of the event is likely to be counter-intuitive.  Investors around the world are hailing the fact that China is apparently loosening its grip on the economy and letting market forces begin to dictate economic...
read more