Markets & Economy

The latest Redbook same store sales growth reading was bad as it fell from 4.6% to -0.1% in the week of September 5th. It’s always hard to figure out if one week of bad data means the trend is changing….

In August, the small business optimism index increased from 98.8 to 100.2 which beat estimates for 98.9. It’s no surprise small business confidence crept up. What is a surprise is how relatively optimistic small firms are in relation to last…

We are getting more details on how the consumer was impacted by the decline in unemployment benefits via non-traditional data points. Normally, waiting until the retail sales report comes out isn’t an issue, but conditions have changed rapidly this year….

The August BLS labor report bested the ADP report by a lot just like it has since the recovery started. As you can see from the chart below, there were 1.371 million jobs added which was less than last month…

It appears the labor market is steadily improving despite fears of a slowdown. Keep in mind, it’s very scary to look at the current picture, but rate of change is what matters. Furthermore, stocks actually do better when the unemployment…

The August ADP report showed 428,000 private sector jobs added which missed estimates for 900,000. Some investors wondered why this didn’t cause stocks to fall. Stocks probably ignored this report because it was wildly too pessimistic in July. The initial…

Everyone was wondering if retail sales growth would crash once the $600 in weekly unemployment checks stopped going out in August. The fears of a big decline in consumer spending were too pessimistic. More people are getting jobs. The people…

We are making an adjustment to our economic thesis based on the latest data. We’ve been saying the decline in unemployment benefits hurt consumers, but they planned ahead which is why the initial impact on spending wasn’t severe. We’re changing…

One of the biggest questions in economics is determining when the economy will be able to survive on its own without fiscal stimulus. That’s important because getting legislation passed has been tough. If the GOP wins the Senate, it will…