After 20 years in the retail and consumer goods sector, I became a research analyst and market strategist for Capital Ladder Advisory Group. Since 2011, I have published some 400+ articles surrounding mainstream retailers like Bed Bath & Beyond, Target, Costco and more. I've covered consumer goods corporations such as Apple, Keurig Green Mountain, SodaStream, Skullcandy, Fitbit and more. To date, I've garnered over a hundred media references to my analytics including Forbes. Presently, I am a contracted consultant to many retail and consumer goods companies in North America and manufacturing entities in China and Korea.
Macro Strategy—Time to End Quantitative Tightening Fast Approaching: Quantitative tightening (QT) has reached its limits in the regional banking sector where reserves are now back to the “ample reserve” minimum that forced the Federal Reserve (Fed) to reverse course after its 2018 QT caused problems in the money market by that year’s end. The new…...
Avoid at all costs: If you’re bullish on the markets you are probably only digesting bullish data points. If you are bearish on the markets you are probably only digesting bearish data points. Seek balance, not bias! ~Seth Golden If you would like to watch this week’s State of the Market video, please click the…...
With the back-stopping of bank deposits by the Fed/FDIC, many equity investors are asking if this is another form of QE and therefore “risk on.” We argue it’s not, and instead represents the beginning of the end of the bear market as falling credit availability squeezes growth out of the economy. This Is Not QE…Once…...
Research Report Excerpt #1 Remember, the Nasdaq is mainly a growth index, holding no banks or financial sector stocks to-date. The Nasdaq is also very top-heavy; 48% of the index maintains Information Technology stocks. For comparison, Information Technology (XLK) is 27% of the S&P 500’s composition. In 2022, investors flocked to “Value” stocks and out…
There is never a time to not be honest with oneself as an investor/trader. We should always remain objective and flexible with respect to incoming data, be it fundamental, technical or quantitative data. I can’t suggest there has been much, if any, shift in the fundamental data year-to-date, but the technical data is becoming increasingly…...
The non-seasonally adjusted headline CPI eased for an eighth consecutive month to 6.0% in February (Chart 1). The seasonally adjusted month-over-month headline figure came in at 0.4%, down a tick from January’s reading. Both headline figures matched their consensus estimates. The Core CPI came in at 5.5%, tallying its fifth consecutive monthly decline since peaking…...
By Ian Shephardson of Pantheon Macro Economic Slowing Wage Gains will Give the Fed Room to Pause, but not Yet The 265K increase in February private payrolls supports our view that January’s 386K spike—revised down from the initial 443K estimate—was an aberration, driven by much less cold January weather than usual. The lack of disruptive…...
I don’t know that there were many investors/traders who anticipated the route in markets this past week, but there are some seasonal factors at play suggesting that March’s price action is on-trend, historically. Looking at only the past 20 years showed that stocks tended to bottom in March. This is likely due to major bear…...
Critical Technical Support Holds This week’s note will be shorter than normal given the Tech playbook note we also published today ahead of our conference this week in San Francisco. Given our comments last week around the technicals, we thought it was important to provide a brief update after Friday’s price action. In short, equity…...
Slower spending growth in February The growth in Bank of America credit and debit card spending per household decelerated in February to 2.7% YoY, from 5.1% YoY in January. On the month seasonally-adjusted (SA) total card spending rose 0.7% MoM, compared to the strong 1.3% MoM in January. As discussed in last month’s Consumer Checkpoint,…...