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

Uber and Lyft

(Dan here…Lifted from comments at Spencer’s SP 500 PE) PGL comments: 1. It is strike day for Lyft and Uber. Uber’s IPO is estimated to be at $90 billion which strikes me as way overpriced. Why? Net revenue is only $7.9 billion whereas operating costs are $12 billion for the latest reported year. Their net […]

March JOLTS report: Hiring and discharges show signs of late cycle deceleration

March JOLTS report: Hiring and discharges show signs of late cycle deceleration The JOLTS report on labor is noteworthy and helpful because it breaks down the jobs market into a more granular look at hiring, firing, and voluntary quits. Its drawback is that the data only goes back less than 20 years, so from the […]

Iran: An Unfortunate Anniversary And Getting Worse

Iran: An Unfortunate Anniversary And Getting Worse It was a year ago today that President Trump removed the United States from the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran as well as Russia, China, UK, France, Germany, and the EU, under the auspices of the UN Security Council.  According to IAEA inspectors, Iran was fulfilling its part […]

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 […]

U.S. Consumers Have Borne the Brunt of the Current Trade War

The National Bureau of Economic Research has highlighted two studies. (hat tip Spencer England) U.S. Consumers Have Borne the Brunt of the Current Trade War Recent tariff increases are unprecedented in the post-World War II era in terms of breadth, magnitude, and the sizes of the countries involved. In 2018, the United States imposed tariffs […]

Scenes from the April jobs report

Scenes from the April jobs report The headline news in Friday’s employment report was excellent. But underneath those headlines, all is not well. Let’s celebrate the excellent headlines first. Adding 263,000 jobs in April was one of the dozen best reports of this entire expansion: Next, here is the YoY% change in nonfarm payrolls, showing an […]

G and GDP update

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) by Robert Waldmann G and GDP update I think it might be time for an update on the crudest of tiny sample reduced form analysis of fiscal policy and the current recovery. One reason for my continued interest is that there was a rather large tax cut enacted in 2017.  […]

Weekly Indicators for April 29 – May 3 at Seeking Alpha

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for April 29 – May 3 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The trend in the past couple of months across all timeframes has been very much to the positive. It is either a signal of a renewed boom, or else a countertrend bounce […]