Kurt Osterberg

Browsing All Posts By Kurt Osterberg

Finance 0
Retail Sales Weren’t Soft

Headline writers were falling all over themselves yesterday to get the news out that retail sales were weaker than the Street conomist crowd consensus guess. The stock market soared as trading algos s...
On May 15, 2015 / By Kurt Osterberg
Finance 0
Weakness In Corporate Revenue Is A Bad Sign For ‘Buy-N-Hold’ Investors

There is one thing that has always nagged me during the 2nd longest bull market run in U.S. history. Corporations have roughly the same revenue per share today as they did halfway through 2007. And ye...
On May 15, 2015 / By Kurt Osterberg
Finance 0
Buy-Write Funds: Got You Covered

Fairly early in an investor’s development comes the lesson about covered call writing. The lecture usually sounds like this: “Income can be generated in a flat market by writing calls agains...
On May 15, 2015 / By Kurt Osterberg
Finance 0
E From Dividends To EPS – Why Stock Prices Are What They Are, Part 2

<< Read Part 1: Why Stock Prices Are What They Are This is the second installment in a series that explains why stocks are priced as they are (or for those who prefer a more precise view, why su...
On May 15, 2015 / By Kurt Osterberg
Finance 0
So You Want To Fight The Central Banks? Then Short Treasurys

Following the great financial crisis in which capitalism was almost wiped out due to too much debt, a funny thing happened on the path to recovery (paved with some $57 trillion in even more debt) &#...
On May 15, 2015 / By Kurt Osterberg
Finance 0
The Big Four Economic Indicators: Industrial Production

Official recession calls are the responsibility of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is understandably vague about the specific indicators on which they base their decisions. This commi...
On May 15, 2015 / By Kurt Osterberg
Finance 0
Consumer Confidence Plunges Below Any Economist’s Estimate; Consumers Shock Economists

Consumer confidence is the third miss by economists in a single day. Please consider the Bloomberg Consensus Estimate for Consumer Confidence. Consumer confidence has fallen back noticeably thi...
On May 15, 2015 / By Kurt Osterberg
Finance 0
Big Surprise; Greece Demands An Emergency Meeting With The Euro-Group

As expected, Greece was able to make the 750M EUR payment to the International Monetary Fund last Tuesday but in order to get its hands on the cash, the country had to force all of its public service ...
On May 15, 2015 / By Kurt Osterberg
Finance 0
Grand Slam

I confess to being baffled by the strength of Denny’s over the past year or two. That bafflement, combined with the chart, compelled me to short it a few days ago at $10.72....
On May 15, 2015 / By Kurt Osterberg
Finance 0
Fall In Capacity Utilization Reflects The Effective Demand Limit

The Effective Demand limit upon the economy is not a very visible concept in the econo-blogosphere. Yet, it represents a limit upon the utilization of labor and capital toward the end of a business cy...
On May 15, 2015 / By Kurt Osterberg