January 9, 2023 | Daily JAM, Videos |
This week’s Trend of the Week: Watch Credit Card Debt After Christmas. Christmas is a huge anomaly when it comes to the stock market and consumer spending. Jobs numbers and data predictions that come out in December are massively adjusted for the season–and the published numbers are almost always wrong. This December, you can look at consumers, already stretched by inflation, taking on more credit card debt because “It’s Christmas” and they want to make sure there are presents under the tree. The thinking may be, “I’ll blow up my credit cards at Christmas, and then start to cut back in January.” The time to look at the default and bad debt rating numbers from banks is in January and February. This will give us a better picture of where the economy and consumers are for 2023 than the skewed December numbers might. Another good indicator of the consumer market is Wal-Mart (NYSE- WMT). As we come out of the holiday spending season, keep an eye on Wal-Mart to get a better idea of how the economy is doing. If Wal-Mart can stay steady, I think other consumer stocks will follow. (Alth9ugh today’s (January 9) rocky numbers from Macy’s, Chico’s, and Lululemon aren’t good signs.)
November 28, 2022 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
In-store traffic at brick-and-mortar retailers grew by a modest 2.9% on Black Friday weekend from 2021, preliminary numbers from Sensormatic Solutions show. (The figure isn’t adjusted for inflation. CPI inflation ran at a 7.7% rate in October.) Online sales during the biggest U.S. shopping day of the year rose 2.3% to $9.12 billion, Adobe Analytics said Saturday. That was slightly ahead of the company’s initial projection of $9 billion. (This number isn’t adjusted for inflation either.)
July 16, 2022 | C, Daily JAM, Dividend Income |
Shares of Citigroup climbed by 13.23% on Friday, July 15, after the company reported earnings of $2.19 a share. Revenue came in at $19.6 billion. Wall Street had projected earnings of $1.689 a share and revenue of $18.4 billion. So it’s not surprising that the stock rose strongly after the report. Or that the gains dragged other bank stocks higher too. For example, Bank of America (BAC), which reports on Monday, July 18, gained 7.04%. Wells Fargo (WFC) climbed 6.17%. To which I say, Thank you, and I’m selling.
May 12, 2022 | Daily JAM, Videos, You Might Have Missed |
My one-hundredth-and-thirty-third YouTube video “My fear is a credit crunch” went up today. My fear is a credit crunch. I’m not as concerned with the Fed raising rates, or a recession–those are sort of run of the usual events. But a credit crunch would be a different thing–think Global Financial Crisis. I think signs are pointing to a credit crunch on consumers, which threatens to make any coming recession much worse. In this video, I lay it out. Take a look, and be careful out there.
July 8, 2019 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don't justify a full post. I've decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I'm calling Notes...
January 16, 2018 | Uncategorized, You Might Have Missed |
Ever since the January 11 announcement from Wal-Mart (WMT) that it would increase the starting wage rate for hourly workers to $11 (and provide a one-time cash bonus of up to $1,000 plus expanded maternity and parental leave b benefits,) pundits have seized on the news to say either “See, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Bill is already working,” or “This is all about competition for workers in a tight jobs market and has nothing to do with recent tax cuts.”
November 7, 2017 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. Blog items are posts like this from today: “12:20 p.m.: China’s Ministry of Commerce has cleared the proposed merger of Potash of Saskatchewan (POT) and Agrium (AGU)–providing diverse its minority positions in Arab Potash and Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (SQM) within 18 months.”Â
April 7, 2017 | Uncategorized |
To subscribe to JAM you need to fill in some details below including, ahem, some info on how you'll pay us. A subscription is $199 (although if you're subscribing with one of our special offers it will be lower) for a year for ongoing and continuing access to the...
March 7, 2017 | Daily JAM, VIX |
To subscribe to JAM you need to fill in some details below including, ahem, some info on how you'll pay us. A subscription is $199 (although if you're subscribing with one of our special offers it will be lower) for a year for ongoing and continuing access to the...
August 29, 2012 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The first revision to second quarter U.S. GDP growth out this morning shows the economy growing at a 1.7% annual rate instead of the 1.6% rate in the preliminary report. Nothing to get excited about—except that other data this morning show that the U.S. economy continues to repair the damage inflicted by the global financial crisis.
