Getting Technical: Weekend Update

Here's the latest weekend update from Serge Perreault, a Chartered Accountant and market technician located near Montreal, Canada. Serge has been following the U.S. market in a series of weekly charts. Here is his update on the S&P 500. The S&P 500 continued to improve but remains inside a sideways trading range showing a volatility of 5.7% for the year and on 13.9% below-average volume for the week.

Note: In his email accompanying the chart, Serge explains his reference to 5.7% volatility as the highest close divided by the lowest close from the beginning of the year minus 1.

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Getting Technical: Weekend Update

Here's the latest weekend update from Serge Perreault, a Chartered Accountant and market technician located near Montreal, Canada. Serge has been following the U.S. market in a series of weekly charts. Here is his update on the S&P 500. The S&P 500 continued to improve but remains inside a sideways trading range showing a volatility of 5.7% for the year and on 13.9% below-average volume for the week.

Note: In his email accompanying the chart, Serge explains his reference to 5.7% volatility as the highest close divided by the lowest close from the beginning of the year minus 1.

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Broke And Getting Broker: 22 Jaw Dropping Statistics About The Financial Condition Of American Families

Most American families are really struggling in this economy and they see most of the families around them really struggling, but they don't have any hard numbers to back up the feelings of economic despair that they are experiencing.  Well, below you will find 22 statistics that prove that American families are broke and getting broker.  Today, the financial condition of most middle class families is rapidly deteriorating.  The number of good jobs is declining, incomes are down, debt loads are up and bankruptcies and foreclosures just continue to increase.  If you step back and really examine the statistics, it becomes really hard to deny that American families are getting poorer.  Well, the wealthiest 5 percent are still thriving, but everyone else is really having a tough time.  The truth is that a large percentage of the U.S. middle class is slowly but surely going broke.  Unfortunately, this is being caused by long-term economic trends that simply are not going to be fixed overnight.

Most Americans had just assumed that the United States would always have a dominant, prosperous economy.  But in the world we live in today there are no guarantees.

The era when almost anyone could find a good job is over.  Millions of good jobs have already left the United States, and vast numbers of legal and illegal workers have been shipped in to the country to compete for the jobs that are still here.

There are millions of Americans that would give just about anything for a good job right about now.  But the good jobs are very few and far between at this point.

Every day there is more depressing news.  For example, a recent job fair in Massachusetts was shut down because of a lack of jobs.

In fact, with jobs so scarce these days, more Americans than ever are willing to work for free.

This is not just a "recession" or an "economic downturn".  The U.S. economy is fundamentally changing for the worse.  Millions of American families are already experiencing economic despair and millions more will be experiencing it very soon.

The following are 22 jaw dropping statistics about the financial condition of American families....

#1 In 2010, one out of every eight American families had at least one family member that was unemployed.  In fact, the figure for 2010 was the highest it has been since the U.S. Labor Department began keeping track of this statistic back in 1994.

#2 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 8 million Americans are working part-time jobs because they can't get full-time jobs.

#3 There are now more than 6 million Americans that the government says have given up looking for work completely.

#4 After accounting for inflation, the average income for an American family has fallen 5 percent since the year 2000.

#5 According to the New York Times, as of 2009 the wealthiest 5 percent of all Americans had 63.5 percent of all the wealth in America.  Meanwhile, the bottom 80 percent had just 12.8 percent of all the wealth.

#6 During this most recent economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic product in over 50 years.

#7 According to the Federal Reserve, between 2007 and 2009 median household net worth in the United States fell by 23 percent.

#8 The Federal Reserve also says that median household debt in the United States has risen to $75,600.

#9 Total U.S. credit card debt is more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

#10 Today, 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

#11 Of U.S. households that have credit card debt, the average amount owed on credit cards is $15,788.

#12 Americans now owe more than $887 billion on student loans, which is even more than they owe on credit cards.

#13 A staggering 25 percent of all American adults now have a credit score below 599.

#14 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.

#15 American workers that are unemployed are nearly twice as likely to have been told by a doctor or a nurse that they suffer from depression.

#16 In 2010, for the first time ever more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure, and that number is expected to go even higher in 2011.

#17 According to RealtyTrac, one out of every 45 U.S. households was hit with a foreclosure filing in 2010.

#18 U.S. home values have fallen an astounding 6.3 trillion dollars since the peak of the real estate market.  Most of that pain has been felt by ordinary American families.

#19 Approximately half of all American workers make $25,000 a year or less.

#20 According to a survey released very close to the end of 2010, 55 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.

#21 1.5 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2010.  That represented the fourth yearly increase in bankruptcy filings in a row.

#22 As 2007 began, only about 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but today over 44 million Americans are on food stamps which is an all-time record high.




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Stock Market: Two Biggest Fears Getting Closer

The stock markets remind me of the real estate market in Toronto, Canada. While the U.S. housing market crashed, the real estate market in Toronto is as strong as it has ever been.

In fact, builders can’t find enough lots to build homes on and developers can’t put condo buildings up fast enough in Toronto. In decent areas, the prices of condos have gone up from $400.00 per square foot to well over $1,000 per square foot and buyers are lining up.

Same thing with the stock market: There are so many people out there saying “It’s overpriced,” but stocks just keep rising. Why? Simply, stocks keep rising because there is too much money around, too much liquidity in the system. I can’t see the Fed doing much else other than dropping money from helicopters to increase monetary stimulus. With so much liquidity around, stocks rise.

The S&P 500 companies alone sit on about $1.0 trillion in cash. Stock markets do not fall when with so much cash in the system.

But here is when stock markets do fall: when inflation rears its ugly head, and when interest rates rise.

My dear friend, neither of these two events is far off. All we need to do is look at the bellwether 10-year U.S. Treasury. Last October, the 10-year Treasury yielded 2.4%. Today, despite the crisis we have witnessed in Japan, which should have sent investors running to the security of U.S. bonds, the 10-year Treasury yields 3.4%, up 41% in less than six months. In fact, this bond is up drastically in the last three trading days.

Yes, stocks will continue to rise in the very immediate term, just like the condo and housing market in Toronto. But the warning signs of trouble ahead are getting clearer every passing day. Enjoy the bear market rally while it lasts, because it won’t last forever.

Michael’s Personal Notes:

It is with sadness that we learn this morning about the bankruptcy filing of Harry & David, the gourmet food and fruit basket purveyor.

Each year I look forward to getting Harry & David gift baskets from our various suppliers. I was an especially big fan of their fruit baskets; their jumbo pears being my favorite.

The stark reality today is that, unless you have a sizeable Internet presence, the old traditional mail-order model will no longer work. The U.S. Post Office continues to adopt the wrong model of raising its prices as it fights the Internet.

Harry & David was established around the time of the great depression: 1934. The business thrived as the decades passed (assets of $500 million today), but it was unable to really get the following that other merchandise companies have enjoyed on the Internet. According to compete.com, Harry and David’s monthly web site traffic was less than one percent of the traffic of Amazon.com.

Where the Market Stands; Where it’s Headed:

Not much I can say about the stock market that I already haven’t talked about. We opened Caesar’s most dreaded month of the year at about the same level that stocks are about to end the month, in spite of the Japan disaster and continued lack of focus by the politicians on curbing government spending.

The bear market rally in stocks, which started in March 2009, continues.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average opens this morning up 5.5% for 2011.

What He Said:

“The proof the party is over in the U.S. housing market could not be clearer to me. The price action of the new-homebuilder stocks is telling the true story—these stocks are falling in price daily (and the media is not picking it up). Those who will hurt most when the air is finally let out of the housing market balloon will be those buyers who bought in late 2005. In fact, the latecomers to the U.S. housing market may end up looking like the latecomers to the tech-stock rally that ended so abruptly in 1999.” Michael Lombardi in PROFIT CONFIDENTIAL, March 1, 2006. Michael started warning about the crisis coming in the U.S. real estate market right at the peak of the boom, now widely believed to be 2005.

Michael bought his first stock when he was 17 years old. He quickly saw $2,000 of savings from summer jobs turn into $1,000. Determined not to lose money again on a stock, Michael started researching the market intensely, reading every book he could find on the topic and taking every course he could afford. It didn’t take long for Michael to start making money with stocks, and that led Michael to launch a newsletter on the stock market. Today, Michael only employs the top market analysts and editors. Some of our recommendations have posted gains in excess of 500%! Michael has authored and published over one thousand articles on investment and money management. Along the way to building Lombardi Publishing Corporation, now with over one million customers in 141 countries, Michael became an active investor in real estate, art, precious metals and various businesses. Readers of the daily Profit Confidential e-letter are offered the benefit of the expertise Michael has gained in these sectors. Michael believes in successful stock picking as an important wealth accumulation tool. Married with two children, Michael received his Chartered Financial Planner designation from the Financial Planners Standards Council of Canada and his MBA from the Graduate Business School, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland. Follow Michael and the latest from Profit Confidential on Twitter

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East Antarctic Ice Sheet getting thicker from underneath

Image: Montana.edu

From AAAS online:

Widespread Persistent Thickening of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet by Freezing from the Base

Abstract

An International Polar Year aerogeophysical investigation of the high interior of East Antarctica reveals widespread freeze-on that drives significant mass redistribution at the bottom of the ice sheet. While surface accumulation of snow remains the primary mechanism for ice sheet growth, beneath Dome A 24% of the base by area is frozen-on ice. In some places, up to half the ice thickness has been added from below. These ice packages result from conductive cooling of water ponded near the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountain ridges and supercooling of water forced up steep valley walls. Persistent freeze-on thickens the ice column, alters basal ice rheology and fabric and upwarps the overlying ice sheet, including the oldest atmospheric climate archive, and drives flow behavior not captured in present models.

Received for publication 8 November 2010.Accepted for publication 18 February 2011.Robin E. Bell1,Fausto Ferraccioli2,Timothy T. Creyts1,David Braaten3,Hugh Corr2,Indrani Das1,Detlef Damaske4,Nicholas Frearson1,Thomas Jordan2,Kathryn Rose2,Michael Studinger5, andMichael Wolovick1

+ Author Affiliations

1Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.

2British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK.

3Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, Kansas University, Lawrence, KS, USA.

4Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe, Hannover, Germany.

5Goddard Earth Science and Technology Center, University of Maryland Baltimore County, MD, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, MD, USA. FEATURED ON FOODPRESS - Serving up the hottest dishes on WordPress.com

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