Morning Briefing
At the most serious end, the mortgage delinquency problem is getting worse
The overall number of borrowers delinquent on their mortgages fell by 340,000 in July. That's down by 9% from June. (These are figures from Black Knight, which collects delinquency numbers monthly. The Mortgage Bankers Association, on the other hand, releases its...
Initial claims for unemployment climb this week: economists had forecast a continued drop in new filings
New claims for unemployment at regular state-run programs rose by 135,000 in the week ended August 15 to 1.1 million. Initial claims for unemployment were 970,000 in the prior week. Economists had expected that initial claims would drop to 920,000 this week. Wall...
Walmart’s caution on an economy without more stimulus
This morning, August 18, Walmart (WMT) reported that comparable store sales climbed 9.3% year over year for the company's fiscal second quarter that ended on July 31. Sales for its e-commerce unit jumped 97% year over year. That was up from growth of 74% in the final...
China’s economic recovery slowed by weak domestic demand
In July China's industrial output climbed by 4.8% year over year, Beijing announced today. That's the same rate as in June. This good news in that it shows the post-coronavirus recovery continues in the industrial sector. But it's bad news in that growth isn't...
Initial claims for unemployment drops below 1 million for last week
The number of workers applying for unemployment benefits from state unemployment programs fell below 1 million for the week ended August 8. At 963,000 the number was below the 1.18 million new claims for the week of August 1. Economists had expected initial claims of...
Back to tech: For a day (at least) rotation is over
Today, August 12, the rotation out of tech winners and into beaten-up consumer and industrial stocks is over. As of the close today. the Standard & Poor's 500 was up 1.40% but the NASDAQ Composite was ahead 2.13%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was higher by...
So why was Friday’s jobs report for July so worrying?
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy added 1.8 million jobs in July. Not a bad number, on an absolute scale. 1.8 million jobs is a lot of jobs. And the total did beat economists' expectations by about 300,000 jobs. But... The total...
Just when we need good data, the numbers are failing us
What's the state of the labor market? On Thursday the Labor Department reported that new claims for unemployment fell, unexpectedly, for the week ended August 1 to 1.19 million. That was down by 249,000 from the week before. Initial claims remain at five times their...
If the dollar gets stronger, it won’t be good news for emerging market assets
The weak dollar of the past few months has been a boon to emerging market assets. It has made the dollar-denominated interest payments that many companies in these economies need to make cheaper in local currency terms. It has helped support financial assets in...
Damage to the real economy piles up while Washington fiddles
The latest news out of the coronavirus economic rescue package talks is that there has been no progress on the big issues the separate the two sides: among them restoring the $600 (or some number) enhanced weekly unemployment benefit and funding for city and state...
After tech earnings beats, market leadership narrows again
After blow-out earnings from Apple (AAPL) and PayPal (PYPL) yesterday and strong beats from Amazon (AMZN), and Facebook (FB), it's not hard to understand why, as of 2:30 p.m. New York time on Friday, the NASDAQ is leading all the indexes. At the hour the NASDAQ...Jim’s Stock Alerts
Download Jim’s eBook for Free
