Not surprisingly, May retail sales fall

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 11, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments Last month retail sales fell 1.2% according to the U.S. Commerce Department.  This compares to an expected increase of 0.2%. Analysis: While the press is questioning the strength of the economic recovery because of the fall in retail sales, I am not.  The month of May saw the worst stock market performance since 1940.  Rightly, or wrongly, your average fellow citizen sees the performance of the...
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11 June 2010: Stellar book endorsements received.

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 11, 2010 in News & Events | 0 comments I just received a fourth and final endorsement for “The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth” to be published October 1, 2010.  Here are the humbling endorsements I have received: “The Intuitive Investor combines rigorous, analytical discipline and good old common sense with his uncommon intuitive gifts.  The best investment you can make today is to buy...
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Number of job openings increasing rapidly

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 8, 2010 in Blog | 2 comments The Associated Press is reporting today that the number of job openings in the U.S. increased to 3.1 million in April, from 2.8 million in March.  The April level is the highest level since December 2008.  Most importantly, the increase of 300,000 job openings came entirely from the private sector. Analysis: In order for new jobs to be created, for the unemployment rate to come down, and for the...
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Dollar appreciation

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 8, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments Not that it is a consolation to those of you who have followed my “buy now” advice of the last month, but the U.S. dollar is appreciating very strongly relative to the euro.  Recall that one of the reasons I was confident that U.S. stocks would do well even if there were an economic crisis in Europe was that there would be a flight to quality.  That is, folks would sell Europe and...
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Further positive EU reforms

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 8, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments Today European finance ministers agreed to critical economic reforms.  Among the reforms are the following: Eurostat, the European economic statistician, has been given the authority to audit the finances of EU member nations.  This has been done to mitigate against European Union countries from lying about their economic performance via number.  In the past, nations have lied to cover up...
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Shock and awe

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 8, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments I have to admit that I have been taken aback by the financial markets’ big sell off over the last month, mostly due to concerns that the EU would implode.  In my opinion the Europeans are making legal and economic reforms that have needed to be made for over a decade.  My shock, and awe, is that these weaknesses have been inherent in the structure of the EU from the beginning.  Yet...
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Official unemployment rate data

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 4, 2010 in Blog | 1 comment This morning the Department of Labor released both its jobs added and unemployment rate numbers for the month of May.  In short, 431,000 jobs were created.  That brought the unemployment rate down to 9.7% from 9.9%.  Financial markets today are focused on the fact that 411,000 of the hires were for temporary census hires.  According to the government data the private sector created 41,000 jobs. ...
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