Latest Posts
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Finance 0
Federal Income Taxes At The Highest Income Levels
There’s an undeniable fascination with looking at the highest income levels and their tax payments. Adrian Dungan provides a glimpse in “Individual Income Tax Shares, 2014,” which was published in the IRS house journal Statistics of Income Bulletin (Spring 2017, pp. 12-23). Here’s a figure showing the share of returns and the share of income taxes paid. For example, the top 1% of income tax returns in 2014 accounted for 20.6% of all income, but 39.5% of all income tax. The top 50% of all tax returns accounted for 88.7% of all income and 97.3% of all income tax. Which in turn implies that the bottom half of all tax ... -
Finance 0
Nasdaq Cycle
Traders are going to get another great buying opportunity sometime this week. Don’t blow it like so many have in the past. Every time we get a correction we start hearing predictions of 20-40% crashes. These people scare themselves and miss the buying opportunity every single time. The sentiment is already nearing excessively bearish levels in the Nasdaq. As I’ve shown over and over the time to buy is when everyone is scared. To really make money in the market you have to behave differently than most everyone else. You need to be greedy when everyone else is panicking. Take what they are giving you. You need to be fearful when everyone el... -
Finance 0
5 Fascinating Charts That Put The Rise Of Bitcoin In Perspective
Whether it’s a bubble, or viral adoption, or something else, I think most would agree that the rise of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general has been simply astonishing. There is very little precedent (if any) for the pace and magnitude of it. And it brings into focus a couple of issues like the often ephemeral and fluid nature of “fundamentals” (the key fundamental variable for Bitcoin is probably how many people end up using it). But while I won’t go into detail on the fundamentals or speculate on the end game for Bitcoin and the various alt-coins, I do have a set of very interesting charts that put the rise of B... -
Finance 0
Dollar General Addresses A Pain Point In Rural America
By now you have probably read about the shrinking middle class in the United States. Part of this is driven by reduced mobility of the American workforce. In the 1990s, 3% of Americans moved out of state every year. Today that rate has fallen to 1.5%, with U.S. mobility at its lowest level since World War II. In rural areas, the shift has been even more dramatic. In the late 1970s, 7.7% of people in rural areas moved across a county line. In 2015, that rate was down to 4.1%. This lack of mobility has created a pain point for those living in smaller towns that have suffered from the decline of manufacturing and farm consolidation, making jobs ... -
Finance 0
EC Futures Are On An Upswing
Amid all the hoopla surrounding the stock market—new records on an almost daily basis—something has been quietly developing in a non-correlated corner. Commodities have been rising off a mid-summer bottom. And not by just a little. The Thomson Reuters/CoreCommodity CRB Index, an equal-weighted benchmark of 17 futures contracts, shot up nearly 19 percent from late June through early November. That’s nearly double the contemporaneous gain in the S&P 500 Index. This has piqued the interest of portfolio builders who’ve been growing more and more concerned about a potential top in the equities market. Commodities have a long track re... -
Finance 0
AUD/USD To Stage Larger Recovery On Upbeat Australia GDP Report
AUD/USD climbs to a fresh weekly-high (0.7654) following the 0.5% rise in Australia Retail Sales, and the pair may stage a larger advance over the remainder of the week as the 3Q Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report is anticipated to show the economy expanding an annualized 3.0%. The above-forecast reading for retail spending accompanied by a pickup in the growth rate may heighten the appeal of the Australian dollar as raises the outlook for inflation, and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) may come under pressure to remove the record-low cash rate as ‘the central forecast is for GDP growth to average around 3 percent over the next few ye... -
Finance 0
Stagflation Looms As PMI Shows Surging Costs And Sinking Growth
Following Manufacturing’s drop, the US Services sector PMI disappointed in November, falling to its lowest since June (as business confidence tumbled to its weakest since February). Average selling prices soared as growth slumped setting the scene for a stagflationary future. ISM Services confirmed this weakness, tumbling to 3-month lows. Of course, between Markit and ISM, there has been at least something to hang some hope on but in November they appeared to line up with PMI Manufacturing and Services (5mo low) sinking (upper pane) and ISM Manufacturing (4mo low) and Services (3mo low) also tumbled… Under the covers, ISM shows ... -
Finance 0
ISM Non-Manufacturing: Continued Growth In November
The Institute of Supply Management (ISM) has now released the November Non-Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), also known as the ISM Services PMI. The headline Composite Index is at 57.4 percent, down 2.7 from 60.1 last month. Today’s number came in below the Investing.com forecast of 59.0 percent. Here is the report summary: “The NMI® registered 57.4 percent, which is 2.7 percentage points lower than the October reading of 60.1 percent. This represents continued growth in the non-manufacturing sector at a slower rate. The Non-Manufacturing Business Activity Index decreased to 61.4 percent, 0.8 percentage poi... -
Finance 0
Stocks: Unanswered Hubris
So much of what has happened over the past eight years – and the past year in particular – defies logic, good sense, and history. Yet trumping them all, literally, is the unvarnished and endless hubris that keeps spouting from the POTUS which is answered by the fates with nothing more than daily lifetime highs to keep feeding him: This obsession over the market (for which he takes full credit… even though he decried equity strength as “fake” during the election, and about 10,000 Dow points ago) has gone absolutely hyperbolic: When will Zeus finally strike? This is getting beyond insane.... -
Finance 0
China And The Elusive Market Economy Status
The year began with US President-elect threatening to cite China as a currency manipulator and to impose a tariff on Chinese imports. Neither step was taken. The US withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which had been negotiated for several years and was an important economic component of the US “pivot to Asia.” Into the summer and early fall, top administration officials reportedly saw encouraging signs. Treasury and Commerce secretaries were highlighting constructive developments. President Trump himself boasted of $250 bln in new deals with China from is recent visit.However, more recently, the tone has soured....
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