Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

S&P 500 P/E

Friday evening the S&P 500 closed at 3013.77, up 20.2 % year to date. But much of that gain is just recovering from the drop in late 2019, as  it is only up some 3.4% from September, 2019. This is the first time the S&P closed above 3000 and people are wondering if the market […]

LONG BOND YIELDS

Everybody and their brother has an opinion about the direction of long bond yields so  it should be OK for me to stick my two cents worth in. This chart of the composite of all long bond yields versus the long wave is one I published every month on the back cover of my monthly […]

Trump and the market

When the market is up,  Trump likes to credit it to his economic policies and when the market is down he likes to find someone else to blame, like the Fed. After being in office for some two years it is time enough to either give him credit or grief and to compare him to […]

REAL TRADE BALANCE

The real trade deficit ( million 2012 $) increased from $81,558 in February to $ 82,054 in March.  The March observation was between the January and February data points so it was not large enough to generate a significant change in imports  0.58 percentage point contribution to first quarter real GDP growth.   In the […]

S&P 500 PE

Based on the 5 May 2019 close the S&P 500 PE on trailing operating earnings is 18.25.  That places it at the bottom of my fair value band that is based largely on  long term treasury bond yields.  We can each have out own theories, but it appears to be that the market is correcting […]