Blog

Will the Boom-Bust Barometer Bounce? October 17, 2013

By Knowledge Leaders Team in Uncategorized

The Boom-Bust Barometer (Commodity Prices/Unemployment Claims) has had a very high correlation with stock prices over the past decade. The rise in unemployment claims has driven it lower. We will wait to see if the end of the government shutdown will bring unemployment claims back down. It was only modestly lower this week (-15k).

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Citi Economic Surpise Index & Counter-Cyclicals October 16, 2013

By Knowledge Leaders Team in Uncategorized

Normally cyclical sectors outperform counter-cyclical sectors when the Citigroup Economic Surprise Index is rising and underperform when it is falling.  The Citi Econ Surprise Index is now down since 9/12/13, having fallen over 25 points.

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What is Dr. Copper Telling Us? October 16, 2013

By Knowledge Leaders Team in Uncategorized

We track the relative performance of the cyclical sectors (consumer discretionary, financial, energy, industrial, materials, technology) compared to the counter-cyclical sectors (consumer staples, health care, telecom, utilities) to gain an insight into leadership within the equity markets. Usually copper–the metal with a Ph.D in Economics–moves in synch with the relative outperformance of the cyclicals.

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DAX Closes at All-Time Highs October 16, 2013

By Knowledge Leaders Team in Uncategorized

Germany’s DAX index closed at all-time highs on Tuesday:And, while the rest of the European equity indices have performed well so far this year, few are close to achieving the same milestone:

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US Econ Chart of the Day October 16, 2013

By Knowledge Leaders Team in Uncategorized

The NAHB Housing Market Index ticket down from 57 to 55 in October. However, the index has shown a surprisingly strong negative correlation with the Unemployment Rate (Index goes up, Unemployment rate goes down). This relationship would suggest that the unemployment rate continues to fall over the next 18 months.

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ZEW Survey October 15, 2013

By Knowledge Leaders Team in Uncategorized

In keeping with the familiar trend among European data releases, Germany appears to be the lone bright spot in an otherwise lackluster survey of economic sentiment:

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We’ve noted before the recent underperformance of ”defensive growth” stocks (Health Care and Consumer Staples stocks) so we thought we’d dive into the details to get a better understanding for the drivers of this relatively sudden turn in performance, since these two sectors (and Health Care in particular) have performed admirably this cycle.

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Teradata Breaks Down October 15, 2013

By Knowledge Leaders Team in Uncategorized

One of the tech high flyers the last few years has been Teradata, who sells software to cloud data centers. Today the target price was cut from $75 to $45 and the stocks is down almost 17%, making it the worst performer in the tech sector.

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