bizzXceleration: Performance, Value and Profit

Well in case you hadn't noticed today was a bit bad in the markets, led down by the financials as the realities of the dreaded credighetti monster re-surfacing, with more bad news from LEH, FNM and FRE. The latter were down 22% and 25% respectively. As were Financials (-3.6%) and Consumer Discretionary (-1.7%) in general. Not surprising in light of our thinking but the really interesting headlines were on Lowe's, which closed up slightly (.16%) on better than expected earnings. Consider the following headlines (from Marketwatch, AP) and especially the emphasized line:

Housing malaise eats into Lowe's net Lowe's Cos. said Monday that its second-quarter profit fell 7.9%, hurt by the housing market downturn, which cut into demand for cabinets, countertops and other big-ticket purchases.  Results, however, exceeded analysts' estimates, thanks to strength in seasonal sales as homeowners restored lawns and outdoor landscaping after last year's drought in much of the country. The No. 2 home-improvement retailer also benefited from the U.S. government's stimulus checks, which aided its comparable sales by as much as 1.5 percentage points, more than it projected. It also gained unit market share at its fastest pace in eight quarters as many independent operators closed shops, Chief Executive Robert Niblock said on a conference call with analysts.Despite better-than-expected results, Lowe's third-quarter profit forecast missed analysts' estimates as the retailer expected a continued challenging housing market into 2009, especially in regions such as California, Florida and the Gulf Coast. It also said it is evaluating the number of stores it plans to open for next year in light of the current sales environment. It said it will announce the final number next month. Sales rose 2.4% to $14.5 billion as the company opened in more locations. Same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, dropped 5.3%.

• Lowe's beats 2Q estimates, despite profit drop

 Along with a lowered outlook you'd think that would hardly be a reason to bid up the stock. As usual what we think is going on is that the lack of grasp on the nature, timing, structure and lags in the business cycle completely escape everyone in general. For example the new meme is that while the world is headed in the tank the US is potentially headed back up. BtW - that differential explains the dollar bounce along with interest rate gaps...watch out. But other than that one line nobody gave the most important retail statistic much attention.

Let us offer up another stat that will be completely ignored - no coverage whatsoever. Real weekly wages were updated by the BLS after the CPI release. Guess what...they were down -3.1%. In fact for the last six months the figures are: -1.4, -.8, -.9, -.7, -1.1,-2.5 and -3.1% ! Remember our "Tipping Point" discussion - well it certainly looks like it's here IOHO. We're going to spend the rest of this post digging thru some big picture economic data to try and read ourselves into a more realistic, data-grounded context. Hopefully in such a way that you can reach your own conclusions. 

GDP vs Consumption

Let's start with a comparison of GDP and Consumption (PCE) back to 1980. Take a gander at this little chart which shows the YOY% change in the two. If there's any doubt about this being cyclic speak now. We'll draw your attention to the teeny little tail where both, but especially consumption, have dropped below the trendline. Now ask yourselves - what recent data you've seen, or read here, would indicate that's going to turn around ? We think the more relevant question is what will the downturn look like - '01, '91 or earlier ?

Recession vs Growth Recession

You might recall that the Fed's current published forecast calls for growth thru 2010 of less than 2% - in fact they're counting on it to reduce inflationary pressures. When the economy grows at less than its' full employment potential think of that as a "growth recession". More importantly translate that out of geekspeak and into pain indicators. That means lost jobs, lowered spending, bad earnings pressures, you name it. Just to put that in context we ran back to 1960 or so and ranked downturns as Recessions (<0%), Week Growth Recessions (0-1%) and Growth Recessions (1-2%). And ended up with this fascinating chart. Note: if you believe our measures we almost experienced a growth recession at the end of '06 but were saved by the oil price drop and saw one again this last couple of quarters. But we are, in fact, now in a growth recession !!

If you'd really like to dig a little more into what's going on we put together some more economic cycle charts running back to 1960 where possible so you can see how the economy (GDP), Consumption and Investment relate and what links to what in the lag structure. We also - and this is especially important - look at the key drivers of future consumption demand. Which are growth in employment and real wages. Like we said at the start that news is getting worse fast. See what it means and keep reading (and of course click to enlarge the charts). 

BtW - the most interesting and potentially useful chart on Wages, Employment and future demand is the last one :) ! 

Continue reading "LT Business Cycle De-construction: Time to Pay the Piper" »

Posted by dblwyo at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After the break you'll find the week's collection of readings on the general worldwide outlook, plus some specifics on Dubai and China, trade and currencies, particularly the role of exports in keeping the US up and the rise in the dollar and a particularly interesting discussion of long-running trade imbalances. That may be all besides the point. Make no mistake about the world's in the process of a tectonic shift in the underlying geo-political structure. The rise of inflation with the accompanying pressures on food and energy prices were an initial trigger. The collapse of the Doha round into domestic agricultural protectionism was a major warning shot. One we might have worked around in time. Russia's unprovoked invasion of Georgia puts it in the position of controlling Europe's energy supplies as well as mediating access to Central Asia and, to some extent, the Middle East. All the assumptions we've all made about how the world will work in terms of stability, security, globalization and worldwide growth are now up for grabs. (Marching thru Georgia: the World Just Changed and We Can't Get Off) We'll try and pursue that line of inquiry at some future date - particularly in conjunction with a discussion of worldwide Oil markets - but do keep it in mind. Especially since the markets and the prognosticators aren't...yet.

Meanwhile we'll focus back on the worldwide economic news - which is almost uniformly bad. BtW - in the readings you'll find the URL's for the Economists free on-line tables for economic and financial information. A worthwhile resources. In the meantime let's consider the state of play of some key worldwide economies, largely courtesy of the Northern Trust econ team who continues to do such thorough and excellent work.

Europe and Japan

 The most recent economic numbers from Japan and Europe are not encouraging, to say the least. As you can both had pretty severe QtQ dives with the latest reports after holding up more than well thru the end of last year and the first quarter of this. Unfortunately the expectations are for rapidly deteriorating conditions in the future. Below you'll find the OECD's outlook for the G-7 which are "set to slow more sharply in the months ahead." That looks pretty sharp so far to us. In fact Friday the WSJ had a major front-page story on the "Global Economic Picture Darkens (WSJ)", which tells you how seriously this is beginning to be taken. Too bad nobody was paying attention back in Jan. or thereabouts when some pre-positioning was possible, instead of ex-post scrambling. Live and learn I guess.

Europe's Big Three

 The European big three, or continental big three (Germany, France, Italy) were the driving engines for those abysmal overall numbers and judging from the outlooks the rest of the continent is following. Associated with the OECD clipping are headlines for the UK, France, Japan, India, Hong Kong, and China. Guess what - you won't like any of them. After all our domestic sturm und drang it would appear that the rest of the world is deteriorating much faster than we are. But the re-coupling thesis will start running painfully in reverse when exports start drying up as these charts tell us will happen.

European Inflation

 As it happens we may enjoy another slight advantage. While our CPI numbers were also as bad as they've been the future outlook is for inflation to start dropping as energy prices come down. In contrast Europe appears to have a more structural inflation problem setting in. Which courtesy of the 1rst Guards Tank Regiment just got a whole lot worse. Europe, along with the rest of the world, appears to be moving into the worst combination of rising inflation and slowing growth. We'll have to see how that all plays out for them. But irrespective of the geo-politics none of this was good news.

Oil, Dollar and Emerging Markets 

Just to end on a cheerful note - NOT. Sorry just kidding. We're going to leave you with a single ginormous chart that shows the dollar, oil prices and the Russian and Brazilian markets. Not coincidently oil prices are down with the growing consequences of a worldwide slowdown. At the same time the downdraft in the dollar with our slowing economy and the growing European ones is reversing. That and the expectations of fewer oil imports, a smaller interest rate differential and so on and so on. The rest of the chart couples in the Russian and Brazilian stock markets. With oil down Russia would be in trouble anyway. Add in Georgia and you'd expect them to do terribly - and they are. But this isn't solely a Russian phenomenon as the Brazilian chart makes clear. Bear in mind Brazil is a commodity export driven economy and when the world imports fewere commodities, well....was it only 2-3 weeks ago that Brazil was the one emerging market you should keep investing in ? 

Continue reading "Time They are a'Changin: Worldwide Downturn to Cold War 2" »

Posted by dblwyo at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After the break you'll find this week's collection of readings in three categories: General Economy, Housing, and Credit Conditions. We've sampled some of the first group's headlines to kickstart our explorations of the tipping point and the consequences for market outlooks. But the bottom line is this - there is a widespread consensus developing that there's no second half recovery and '09 is looking worse. There's also a bit of better reporting on some of the data, and some not. In Housing what's started to dawn on folks is that the sub-prime mess is moving into Alt-A and Prime, or as the Great Tanta has it, "we're all sub-prime now". The number of homeowners under-water and the new wave of defaults lead to CR's discussion of strategic themes for Housing for '09 - which is a must read. And all that naturally leads us to tightening credit conditions, more bank writeoffs and even the best banks (JPM of all people) hiding more surprise write-offs and losses in obscure reports. Read away - we urge you. In the meantime we want to take a deeper dive into some of today's data to set the stage - having already covered Retail Sales (Dismal Headlines, Worse Realities: Retail Sales and Economic Outlook).

 But just for fun let's quote you two different headlines on Industrial Production - both reporting on the same data and both given entirely opposite impressions.

Industrial Output Growth Slows U.S. industrial production slowed in July, pulled back by a drop in output at utilities as the weather turned fairer. Industrial production increased 0.2%, following a revised 0.4% climb in June, the Federal Reserve said Friday. Previously, June output was seen rising 0.5%.

Industrial output up 0.2 percent in July Industrial output rose in July at a slightly better pace than expected as a further rebound in the auto industry offset a big plunge in output at the nation's utilities.

Fascinatingly the markets are up today, led by Financials of all things. Will wonders and delusions never cease ? This despite the fact that, other than WMT earnings, all the economic news was unremittingly bad: foreclosures are up 55%, new house prices dropped -7.3%, continuing jobless claims accelerated and new claims were unexpectedly high and consumer inflation jumped 0.8% MtM, a 17-year high ! None of that sounds like the outlook is sanguine in the sense of good. Anyway, as threatened, we're going to revisit the outlook and consequences for corporate earnings and what it means for the market. Tracking which posts get the most attention, equally strangely if not more so, the diagnosis of a schizoid market attracted more attention then the careful dissection of the profits outlook (Talkin Profits: Economic Outlook, Earnings, Business Performance ?) and what the rapidly deteriorating economic outlook means. To put a point on it if we are indeed crossing a tipping point and starting into a consumer-driven downturn, as is now being widely recognized, ignoring profits and the current market valuations is dangerous to your financial health. On the grounds that perhaps we haven't made it entirely clear why you really care we're going to build a longish post walking thru various aspects of profits, earnings, PE's and the outlook. Just as one example most of the downturn so far in the S&P is due to Financials. If the economy turns over, as we expect, none of that is priced in.

Economy vs Markets

Just to set the stage let's start by considering the long-run relationship between the economy and the Markets. The meme is that markets are forward-looking though the WSJ noted that hasn't been true recently - as in the last decade ! Actually it's never been true. This multi-part chart shows the YoY% changes in GDP and the SP500 on top and the % growth in both since 1951. To our eyes the markets are still far ahead of where the state of the economy would justify their current levels.

Earnings Outlooks

Hopefully the prior post put enough evidence on the table about the structural relationships between the economy and profits that we can take it as given. And the translation between Profits and Earnings will also be taken as understood. That being the case the fundamental valuation equation we like is Graham-Dodd's: PE = (8.5 + 2*Growth)* 4.4/AAA-Yield. We'll dig into that a little later but taking it as a starting point the question becomes what are earnings expectations. And, much more importantly, do they make sense in view of our economic outlook. Take a look at the following chart which reproduces S&P's bottoms-up collection of analysts earnings prognostications and take a careful look at a) the revisions by sector and b) whether or not you believe the outlooks. And to put another point on it the two sectors that are up today and driving the market are Financials and Consumer Discretionary - with the big debate about a bottom in Financials raging onward (Riding the Storm - NOT: Breakdowns, Culture & Malfeasance in Finance).

 Now if you're readers of this blog and these two sets of earnings estimates hang together for you you can probably stop reading. But if thinking that the Financials (in read) and the Discretionary and Technology outlooks (in yellow) have some questions that should be asked below we walk thru some valuable issues of PE and valuation that should be reflected. And aren't IOHO.

Continue reading "Profits, Earnings, PEs and Outlooks: Why You Should Reall....lly Care" »

Posted by dblwyo at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After the break we provide a couple of excerpts from our accumulating weekly readings on the economic news - and can we just say reality is slowly creeping in. We tried to make that point with the prior post and translate the implications of a rapidly slowing economy into the earnings outlook. Since that argument didn't fly very well we'll pick it up again later and concentrate on today's headlines. Not un-representative of which would be:Retail Sales Drop for First Time in 5 Months. Or these:Economic Slide to Extend Into 2009: Blue Chip, Economy Seen Slowing More Sharply: Philly Fed.

 Fortunately, or not, we consider the MSM reporting to be improving but still not quite there yet. Sadly for our market positions the markets got it right the first half of the day but schizophrenia returned in the second, as they recovered. But if Mr. Market is listening let us correct your mis-apprehensions. They are indeed out to get you and here's the proof.

As always  if you'll click on a chart  you'll get an enlarged version in a seperate window.

Retail Sales

 The headlines have it that Retail sales dropped after an upward revision for last month, not mentioning the downward revision for May :). More interestingly our preferred YoY change was 2.9%, 5.8% x-Autos. Which sounds good until you look at the chart and realize it's downtrending. MUCH more important though is real retail sales which was -1.9%, negative for the eight month in a row and at an increasing rate. Let's zoom in and get a little more granular so you can see the more recent data.

Real Retail Zoom-In

I'm afraid the headlines and MSM reporting still hasn't absorbed the power of YoY reporting or of looking at the inflation-adjusted data but at least they're improving a little. When you get more granular, as in this chart, you can that we turned negative in Dec07. In other words when energy prices started going crazy people did the rational thing. CalculatedRisk's continued emphasis, supported by minor analysts like Marty Feldstein, that we most likely enterred a recession in then is looking better and better. 

 Real Sales Energy-Adjusted

Thought if you just looked at retail sales x-Autos you'd think things weren't really that bad. As a big picture sidebar observation we urge you to recall our comments from a while back that the GDP numbers and component breakdowns tell us that indeed we crossed, or are crossing the tipping point into a more serious downturn. (Tipping Points, Blindsides, Ouches: Tough Times Getting Tougher) An observation obviously NOT absorbed into the markets as yet. Where you can see this is by netting out gas station sales - a statistic you can get nowhere else since it's a painful manipulation of the data, at least so far.

 When you do that it turns out real retail sales turned negative in Oct07 ! And of course that's the same month when real (estimated) gasoline sales jumped and have kept climbing. In other words real retail sales has been negative for 10 months. And the rate of decrease is increasing. Tipping points indeed. And nobody is factoring that into their pricing, valuations or business planning that we can tell. There are some very unpleasant surprises lurking in the wood work for a lot of people as the normal cyclic lags start to work themselves into view.

Just put another big picture point on it what we've seen is the air going out of the leveraged financial bubble over the last three quarters. In other words the consequences of the credit bubble bursting and destroying the Housing market and sucking out the "vital bodily fluids" from the markets. What we have not seen is the consequences of a downturn in the business cycle. But IOHO we're about to. (News Alert: Vicious Credit, Economy, Market Cycle Spotted, Markets Drivers 2 (Buyouts): the Carry to Cash Economy, Market Drivers: Liquidity, Liquidity(Buyouts) and Buyouts (Buybacks)

Continue reading "Dismal Headlines, Worse Realities: Retail Sales and Economic Outlook" »

Posted by dblwyo at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now we're going to shift the focus back onto business performance but come at it top-down by starting with the macro-issues of profitability and asking what the economic outlook means for business performance and earnings outlooks. After the page-break you'll find some readings on those topics, general business conditions and some specific players (WMT, SBUX, Kraft, Whole Foods) that illustrate many of the points. Before we get into the meat however we'd like to share some of the morning's headlines which reinforce the arguments about a slowing economy and the deteriorating earnings outlooks. MUCH more importantly however these are the headlines from places like the WSJ and Bloomberg. Here's the first central question: what happens when it dawns on businesses and investors that the V-shaped recovery is history ? And that '09 is not looking much better ?

1.       Economists Expect 2008's Second Half To Be Worse Than First The U.S. economy is poised for an unpleasant finish to 2008, amid a consumer-spending slowdown and a weakening global economy. The emerging pattern is the reverse of what most forecasts showed at the beginning of the year.

2.       OECD Forecasts Sharper Slowdown for G-7 The world's leading developed economies are set to slow more sharply in the months ahead, according to the OECD's indicators of future activity.

3.       Predicting What's Next Gets Harder Investors often expect the stock market to behave like a crystal ball. Lately it has made a better rearview mirror. For decades, turns in the stock market typically led earnings by roughly six months. But during the past decade or so, stocks have moved roughly in tandem with, and occasionally lagged, the trajectory of profits…

4.       Is the Market Still a Future Indicator? At this point, you would have thought the Efficient Market Hypothesis would have died a quite death. The most fascinating aspect of this is the opportunity for anyone in the market to identify inefficiencies. Discover where the market has a non random error -- we've called it Variant Perception over the years -- and you have a potentially enormous money making opportunity.

 Those headlines pretty well capture the arguments we've been making for some time, are based on similar analysis and point to a lot of other folks seeing the tipping point being crossed. And as Barry Ritholz points out in his post on the Deficient Market Hypothesis "you have an ....opportunity" ....if you make the right choices of course :) ! Speaking of which the next central question is what happens when the analysts figure out that their earnings outlooks need to go in the trash ? And the markets absorb those revisions ? How long will all that take to percolate ? Somewhere in there may lie some of Barry's opportunities.

We'll leave you to skim thru the readings which beef up these arguments but will note that the blue-highlighted titles are URL's - in other words you can click thru to get to the underlying story or post if you like. Now let's jump into parsing out the profit analysis

 Corporate Profits: First Pass

Let's start with a fairly simple look by using the St. Louis Fed's FREDII data graphing tool to look back at YoY changes in corporate profits to 1980. Part of the point here is that you aren't reliant on the MSM but courtesy of the Fed can take some pretty deep dives yourself.  It may take a bit to learn the tool and data sources, and maybe a bit more to learn what the data's telling you, but generating current analysis eventually takes a few minutes. Also btw just clicking on any graphic or chart will bring up an enlarged version for closer examination.

Take a careful look here and there are several things to notice. First off the timing, patterns and business cycle relationships are exactly what one would expect. The economy drives profits, no if, ands or buts. With some aberrations  that are important.  The blue line is  "real company"  after-tax profits on the right scale and it's volatile. But that scale wouldn't be so distorted except for the huge jump since '00. Before that those profits were cycling around a trend, which turned down in the '90s. Notice also that the drop in this decade is steep, now near-zero and below and appears headed lower.

Corporate Profits: Pass II

Let's take another pass at the data courtesy of Northern Trust's econ department and zoom in a bit, albeit with slightly different data on profits coupled with some inflation data.

 First off notice that QtQ profits have been negative and dropping since Q406. Wonder where those buybacks and earnings reports are coming from ? You should. We do know it certainly didn't go into hiring or capex. And therefore won't either !

What about margins ? Well when the ratio between the good CPI and the finished consumer goods PPI is dropping like a rock that tells us there's no pricing power whatsoever. It also tells us that profits have been under enormous and growing pressures for some time. And when it accelerates those pressures worsen. Now what do you think about future profit prospects ? Worse and worse we hope ! :)

Corporate Profits: Pass III 

Now let's take final pass at the big picture so you can get the full "slowly-boiling-frog" environment. The rather busy chart below shows corporate profits from 1979 from the national accounts. The UL shows the absolute number stacked up and if it looks like the Finance industry has been wallowing at the trough you'd be right. The UR shows profits as a % of GDP. We see three major structural trends that will govern things in the future. First off profits for non-financial companies were steady until this decade when they started liquidating their futures. Second, it looks like Financial companies went thru a major structural jump-shift and grabbed off more of GDP and, in the LR chart which shows % share of total profits, that's confirmed. And we now know what that was based on and how solid it was. Hm.....not promising. Remember the broken business models and wonder how that'll play out. And third, it looks like foreign profits (Rest-of-World or ROW) showed a steady rise until later in this decade when they took a big jump. That's born out in the LL chart which shows YoY% chanages, which btw, are both steady and pretty much mirror the business cycle. Note that very recently ROW profits are showing a non-cyclic jump. Brave new world indeed.

Continue reading "Talkin Profits: Economic Outlook, Earnings, Business Performance ?" »

Posted by dblwyo at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If they really are out to get you are you paranoid, or security conscious or both ? Well those of us who have had a general bearish tenor to our thinking might be excused for viewing a week with a couple of 300 point or so days as "out to get us". Especially when the last one was triggered by a huge drop in oil prices and a rise in the dollar. And both in turn resulted from a rapidly slowing world economy, demand destruction and weakening of foreign currencies. In other words because the last prop that was holding up the economy got kicked out from under the Markets rallied ? Sheesh ! The saving grace in all this (H/T Big Pic btw) is that 300-pt days occur during Bear Markets, not bull ones.

Since markets can demonstratively stay irrational longer then we can manage solvency we can at least have the pride and consolation of knowing they're NUTs. That is, they are paranoid and don't know which way the fundamentals are going and trust none of them. And schizophrenic since this week also saw 200 pt. drops - all on rather weak volume relatively speaking. After the break you'll find the usual collection of relevant readings for reflection - which we urge. And you should also consider this post as part of series, almost a hat trick or better (News Alert: Vicious Credit, Economy, Market Cycle Spotted,It's a Long Way to Tipperary: the Foreign Economic News,Take No Prisoners: Real Econ Data vs MSM Reporting) of prior posts. Not that repeating ourselves appears to be influencing the madmen in power to any extent. Nonetheless let's go into the breach another time with the following Chart sets.

UPDATE (tomorrow's WSJ): Signs Suggest Recovery  For U.S. Hasn't Arrived  (WSJ) Dead-end rallies often pervade bear markets, and while some negatives for stocks have turned positive, a laundry list of challenges still needs to be overcome. {well, well, welll...extened excerpt after the break...amazing !}

Basic Market Charts

Below are the basic comparison charts between the SP500 and the NDX showing daily back to Oct07 and weekly back three years. As you can see both are "rallying" in what we think is a bear market rally, somewhat milder than March's. Also notice that while the SPX has given up most of its' gains since '06 the tech index is clinging to everything almost thru last Fall. On the presumption of course that tech earnings will not experience any down pressures from a slowing economy and declining capex spending - despite the fact that the letter has already started tipping over ! 

 Inter-Market Comparisons

Speaking of widespread schizophrenia and paranoia how 'bout those foreign markets ? The chart set below shows daily back a year and weekly back three for selected ETFs: EEM (emerging markets), EWJ (Japan), IEV (Europe), EEB (BRICs), FNI (Chindia), GXC (China), EWZ (Brazil) and EPI (India). Didn't find a Russian specific one but in addition to their minor domestic political corruptions problems they've just started a war with Georgia. Be interesting to see how that plays out if you're not there. Meanwhile we'd say the bloom is definitely off the foreign, emerging and BRIC markets, a point we've been "chicken-littling" about for some time. With the possible exception of Brazil, which looks like a great speculative trading opportunity though, not an investment opp. At least until/if it joins its' breathen.

 Inter-Sector Comparisons

Even more interesting by our lights is how the different sectors have been doing since it appears that the runup in this little BM Rally is concentrated in Financials ! [You're kidding me, right ? (Riding the Storm - NOT: Breakdowns, Culture & Malfeasance in Finance, Cramer's Anniversary: Continuing Credit Metastasis and Economic Outlook)]. And Consumer related stocks - ditto, cf. the prior posts on the economy. Below you'll find another composite chart using ETFs again to compare the sector performances. With six-month daily charts on top and 1-year weeklies on bottom. Where the sectors are Finance(XLF), Consumers: Discretionary (XLY) and Staples (XLP), Healthcare (XLV) and Industrials (XLI) are the left. And Energy (XLE), Materials (XLB), Tech (XLK) and Telecom (IXP) on the right. Which neatly divides them - Links vs Rechts - into better and worse than the SP500. The worst of course being Finance but Discretionary not too far behind. And both doing nicely in the BM Rally. Interestingly Industrials are weakening. Energy has really taken a hit as the global slowdown advances which has also impacted Materials. But unless our assessment of the economy is completely off base those gyrations are not well-grounded. In fact, a striking point we want to re-emphasize (Bad Times, Bad Companies, Bad Markets), is that except for Finance and perhaps XLY none of these have shown a serious decline. Somethings not right here....which may make us the paranoid but not the schizoid.

Continue reading "Schizophrenic Paranoia Gone Wild(Update): Which Way Do the Markets GO ?" »

Posted by dblwyo at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)