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Main Street Optimism Ticks Higher Despite Hiring Challenges
Main Street optimism edged higher in August, as the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index rose to 100.8. That reading sits above the long-term average of 98 but missed the consensus estimate of 101. Stronger sales expectations led the improvement, with a net 12% of owners anticipating higher real sales volumes. This represents a six-point jump […]
Sep 10, 2025
Healthcare Jobs Keep Labor Market Afloat: But For How Long?
The August jobs report clarified what many investors already suspect: the U.S. labor market is stalling. Outside of healthcare and social assistance, private-sector job creation has nearly flatlined this year. So far in 2025, the economy has added an average of 74,000 private-sector jobs per month. Stripping out the ~64,000 monthly additions from healthcare jobs, […]
Sep 9, 2025
Earnings Are Becoming Harder To Come By
Another round of quarterly earnings reports has come and gone, and once again, many companies beat profit expectations. Yet a glance at the graph below from The Wall Street Journal, showing that retail sales have been flat excluding inflation, suggests that the ways in which companies are growing their earnings must be changing. The Wall […]
Sep 8, 2025
Fed Policy Is More Restrictive Since Rate Cuts
The Fed has cut the Fed Funds rate by 1% since late 2024, and the presumption from many market participants is that the Fed has made policy less restrictive. Technically, they are somewhat correct. Banks and other financial institutions that borrow over very short periods have seen their borrowing costs decline due to the Fed’s […]
Sep 5, 2025
Robots Are Tesla’s Future: EVs No Longer The Value Proposition
Tesla is the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles (EVs) in the US and second, behind BYD, in the world. Despite its strong position in the EV market, Tesla is only the fourteenth largest auto manufacturer. Despite its low ranking, it has a market capitalization that is almost four times that of Toyota, the second-largest auto […]
Sep 4, 2025
Monthly Market Trends: Do They Matter?
The graph below breaks down the monthly performance of the S&P 500 since 1928. As shown, September is the only month that has seen more negative monthly performances than positive ones. September’s record joins February as the only two months with a negative average, albeit February is only down 0.08%, versus the more significant 1.17% […]
Sep 3, 2025
Withholding Taxes: Better Forecasting Employment Data
Once again, we find ourselves waiting on the all-important BLS labor report. The markets and the Fed are heavily dependent on the monthly BLS employment data; however, there are other labor market data sources that can provide a more frequent indication of labor market conditions. For instance, the weekly BLS data on jobless claims helps […]
Sep 2, 2025
The Nvidia Earnings Train Keeps On Rolling
Once again, Nvidia continues to see its earnings and revenues grow at astonishing rates. Consider the following: As we noted, data center revenue is driving Nvidia’s fantastic earnings and revenue growth. Helping maintain this growth is its Blackwell GPU architecture. In the last quarter, the new Blackwell products saw a 17% jump in revenue. As […]
Aug 29, 2025
As The Fed Turns: The Soap Opera Grows More Intriguing
President Trump fired Fed Governor Lisa Cook for cause. The President claims, There is sufficient reason to believe you may have made false statements on one or more mortgage agreements. This is the first time in the 112-year history of the Fed that a President has fired a Fed Governor. Cook is fighting the dismissal, […]
Aug 28, 2025
Smart Money Loves Healthcare: But Are They Now Dumb?
We have written a few Commentaries over the last year describing how retail, not institutional, investors are driving markets higher. To wit, there is ample evidence that with each market dip, retail investors are not selling, instead buying unrelentingly. In May, we wrote the following: Typically, institutional investors are right; however, over the last few […]
Aug 27, 2025
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