Market Overview

What is most amazing about the current “manufacturing recession” is that it has occurred while automobile production has remained rather stout. That would suggest the state of production...

Those that were hoping for an “economic renaissance” in the United States got some more bad news this week. It turns out that the U.S. economy is in significantly worse shape than the...

I love conspiracy theories. They help to explain puzzling developments that don't make much sense unless there is a conspiracy behind them. The conspiracy theory du jour is that at the February 26-27...

Retail-LessDespite all of the cheering by the mainstream media that the economy is “doing great” and “no recession” in sight, a look at small business sales trends and retail...

The Winter of 2015-2016, which came to an end a few weeks ago, has been officially designated as the mildest in the U.S. in 121 years according to NOAA. While this fact will certainly add a major...

Headlines announced on March 16 that Japan had held its negative interest rate steady at negative 0.1 percent. But markets have missed the nuanced changes made by the Bank of Japan’s governor...

As expected, the Bank of England's policy decisions were non-events as it kept both the Bank Rate and stock of purchased assets unchanged at 0.50% and GBP375bn, respectively. Both votes were unanimous...

No one can feign surprise that the Bank of England kept policy steady. Nor was the 9-0 vote truly surprising, though there had been some speculation that of a couple of dovish dissents. Nevertheless,...

Bank of Canada upbeatAlthough the BoC kept its key rate unchanged at 0.5% yesterday, it nevertheless announced that it had upgraded its growth outlook for 2016 and 2017, citing the positive impact of...

Thursday is shaping up to be a busy day for financial markets, starting with U.S. inflation data for March, followed by more speeches from Federal Reserve officials and topped off with and a batch of...

Perhaps the market was overly pessimistic on the slew of corporate earnings. Everyone expected a weak first quarter for the banks but markets move on results versus expectations so the fact that JP...

Japan is once again defying common economic sense. While its unemployment rate is at the lowest level in almost two decades, wage growth has been disappointing, and the government is even putting...

Currencies EUR/USD: The pair is trading below its downward trend line on a 4 hour time frame. The next support is near the 1.1141 level and the resistance is at 1.1495. USD/JPY: The pair has...

European markets are expected to open higher this morning as they are powered by optimism that bank earnings may not be as bad as many were expecting. Is this the same old story under which firms...