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  • Finance 0

    Week In Review: BeiGene Completes $158 Million IPO In The US

    Deals and Financings BeiGene (NSDQ: BGNE), a Beijing clinical-stage novel drug company, raised $158.4 million in its US IPO that showed strong interest (see story). The company priced the offering at the top of the expected range — $24 per share — and increased its size from 5.5 million ADSs to 6.6 million. In its first day of trading, the company’s stock rose $4.62 to $28.62, a 19% increase. The transaction is especially impressive in view of the early-2016 stock market turmoil, which prevented any companies from completing IPOs in the US during the month of January.  Sinovac Biotech (NSDQ: SVA), a Beijing vaccine compa...
    On February 6, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    The Monetary Root

    How did the world get this way? I don’t mean the oncoming recession, if that is indeed, as it appears, the economy’s fate. How did the payroll statistics ever attain this kind of deference and even religious zeal? U.S. manufacturing is shrinking, corporate profits are declining and goods are piling up on warehouse shelves. Those trends have elevated concern that a U.S. recession may loom in the next year or two. Yet in the one area that matters most, the economy has continued to shine: Hiring. Those two paragraphs are at extreme odds with each other, so much so that they are mutually exclusive. It cannot be both. Forced to choose, the me...
    On February 6, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Manufacturing Sector Resilience…So Far

    The employment release provided some interesting insights into how manufacturing has fared, in the wake of the appreciation of the dollar (and the slowdown in the world economy). In particular, manufacturing employment growth registered at the high end of the range experienced over the past year, as noted by Furman/CEA. Figure 1: Log industrial production in manufacturing (blue), employment (red) and aggregate hours (green), all normalized to 2014M07=0. Source: FRB and BLS via FRED, and author’s calculations. Note that while employment is above the most recent peak, aggregate hours is not. Furthermore, the dollar has appreciated on a broa...
    On February 6, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    E Employment: Non Credo

    I don’t believe it. That is, I don’t believe that we are over the effects of the Great Financial Crisis  – the one that, according to Oz economist Professor Keen, 99.9% of professional economists didn’t anticipate. “The employment rate (the proportion of people aged from 16 to 64 who were in work) was 73.7%, the highest since comparable records began in 1971,” chirrups the UK’s Office of National Statistics in their November 2015 report. Translated to block graph form, their data looks something like this: Fig. 1 The best in over 40 years? Really? Somebody with more patience and expertise please unpa...
    On February 6, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Bad News Is Now Bad News

    There now is a cascade of negative news and investors are starting to get it. The litany of this was felt much of this week. Even supposedly great Employment News Friday investors caught up with the analysis of what it was really like. Even Obama tried for a victory lap on news of a 4.9% unemployment rate. The laughable and hollow cheer was found to be BS since the data reflected terrible full time employment hiring and weak wage growth. We continue to lose full time well-paying jobs. Those jobs have taken flight given good trade deals for manufacturers and most good jobs are now off-shore. Economic data all week was worse than disappointin...
    On February 6, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Tyson Foods – Chart Of The Day

    The Chart of the Day belongs to Tyson Foods (NYSE:TSN). I found the poultry processing stock by using Barchart to sort today’s All Time High list for the highest technical buy signals, then used the Flipchart feature to review the charts. Tyson Foods, Inc. is the world’s largest fully-integrated producer, processor and marketer of chicken and poultry-based food products. Tyson is a comprehensive supplier of value-added chicken products through food service, retail grocery stores, club stores and international distribution channels. Although its core business is chicken, in the United States Tyson is also the second largest m...
    On February 6, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Dollar Beaten Back But Cynicism Is Unwarranted

    The US dollar traded higher before the weekend with the help a fairly robust jobs report. Although the jobs growth itself was somewhat disappointing, the details were constructive: More people working a longer work week and earning more. The participation rate rose, and the unemployment rate (U-3) fell. The Atlanta Fed GDPNow tracker increased to 2.2% in Q1 16 from 1.2% at the start of the week.  Despite the pre-weekend gains, the greenback lost ground against all the major currencies last week. We had anticipated a stronger showing for the dollar following the BOJ surprise rate cut and the ECB’s reassessment of its monetary po...
    On February 6, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    The Economy Is Growing

    Podcast: Play in new window | Play in new window (Duration: 13:16 — 6.1MB) DOW – 211 = 16204 SPX – 35 = 1880 NAS – 146 = 4363 10 Y – .02 = 1.85% OIL – .73 = 30.99 GOLD + 18.40 = 1174.50 The S&P 500 extended its loss for the week to 3%. The index is now down more than 8 percent in 2016. The Nasdaq closed at its lowest since October 2014. Yesterday was a jobs report Friday. If you are a regular listener, you know that I go into quite a bit of detail. The reason is simple. The jobs report is the single most important economic data we can look at each month. So, here are the numbers: The economy added 151,000 nonfarm jobs in ...
    On February 6, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Scary Stock Charts Speak For Themselves

    You Can Draw Your Own Conclusions About Risk vs. Reward Video Length: 00:21:00...
    On February 6, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Dow Jones Industrial Average Tumbles 211 Points After Mixed Jobs Report

    How Did the Stock Market Do Today? Dow Jones: 16,204.83; -211.75;-1.29% S&P 500: 1,880.02; -35.43; -1.85% Nasdaq: 4,363.14; -146.42; -3.25% The Dow Jones Industrial Average today (Friday) fell 211 points after the U.S. Labor Department released a mixed jobs report for January. Tech stocks sank after LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD) announced weak guidance for Q1 2016, and biotech stocks dragged down the healthcare sector and the Nasdaq. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) – Wall Street’s fear gauge – was up 8.9%. On the economic front, the unemployment rate fell to 4.9% in January, but the country only created 151,000 jobs. Ec...
    On February 5, 2016 / By