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Claims fell to 346,000 during the week ending June 22, which was basically right in line with expectations for a reading of 345,000.
This is an improvement from last week's reading of 355,000.
Overall, good news.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Initial Jobless Claims Fall To 346,000
The Department of Labor just released its latest reading of weekly initial jobless claims.
We're Experiencing Market Tranquility
Markets aren't doing much early in the European trading session.
England's FTSE 100 is up 0.3%.
France's CAC 40 is down 0.2%.
Germany's DAX is flat.
Spain's IBEX 35 is down 0.5%.
Italy's FTSE MIB is flat.
Asian market's followed the U.S. sharply higher in overnight trading. Japan's Nikkei jumped 2.9%. Australia's S&P/ASX climbed 1.6%.
After a month of selling in the stock market, these upwardly biased moves are welcome.
"This double play – of stronger data and less anxiety about the policy-driven liquidity paradigm – is essential for maintaining market tranquility," said PIMCO's Mohamed El-Erian earlier this week. "The hope is that, having re-priced in a rather disorderly manner, markets can regain their footing. The valid worry is that market tranquility may just invite selling by those that were sidelined in prior trading sessions by both price action and liquidity shortfalls."
The 'End-Of-The-World Trade' Is Getting Annihilated Today
Going long gold and shorting stocks. Josh Brown called it, aptly, the "End Of The World Trade" since that basically represents a belief that rocks are going to be more valuable, over time, than enterprises creating value.
Of course that trade has been getting crushed.
Gold has had a horrendous year and stocks remain near all-time highs.
And today it is a complete wreck.
Gold is down over 4%, while stocks are up over 1%.
As such, the end of the world trade is getting totally annihilated today.
Here's a look over the last year.
The 27 Worst Charts Of All Time
There are some pretty awful charts out there.
We've talked about certain mediums — like pie charts and infographics — that are fundamentally flawed, but it's always important to look at specific examples of charts gone wrong.
As a learning exercise, we pulled together these 27 charts that are particularly bad.
It's not that the chart creators are dumb or careless – to the contrary, a lot of work seems to have been done on several of these by quite intelligent people — it's just that people have access to more data visualization assets today than ever before.
All periods of innovation are also periods of widespread failure, as people try to create something new and occasionally push out a few duds.
So here are 27 charts that — for one reason or another – belong among the pantheon of worst charts ever made.
Special shout outs to both Andrew Gelman's excellent blog as well as the Eager Eyes blog, both of which are excellent sources of chart criticism and insight.
EL-ERIAN: Is The Fed Giving Us Too Much Guidance?
REUTERS/Fred ProuserMohamed El-Erian
$('.icon-tooltip').tooltip();There's a reason markets are pricing in worst-case scenarios, and it has to do with the Federal Reserve's messaging as well as monetary policy, PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian said Tuesday."The longer they stay unconventional, the deeper they venture with these experimental policies, the more the costs and the risks start to become large relative to the benefits," he said. "There's a second really interesting issue, which is, are they giving us too much guidance?"
On CNBC's "Fast Money," El-Erian said that oversharing had real consequences.
(Read More: 3 Sectors to Weather Rising Rates)
"When you give so much guidance to the market, you risk over-determining," he said. "So what happens, people jump to the terminal values. They don't even wait for the journey. They go immediately to the destination, and the re-price, and then the bad technicals kick in."
El-Erian also said that he still saw value in bonds, depending on the viewpoint.
"From a value perspective, there is value in Treasuries up to about 10 years now," he said. "From a technical perspective, that's where the uncertainty is."
Because fixed-income markets started from "horrible technicals," as soon as volatility spiked, funds starting selling, El-Erian said.
"We saw complete compression in risk appetite on the Street and outflows from bond funds," he added. "So, technicals still very vulnerable, but from a value perspective, there's value here in quite a bit of the yield curve, especially in the United States."
(Read More: S&P 500 Has Peaked for 2013: Guy Adami)
El-Erian also saw as good news a bit of backpedaling on behalf of the Fed.
"The reason why today good news was good news is because it came with something else," he said. "It came with indications out of China and indications out of the U.K., speaking on behalf of the Fed, that they wanted to walk back all this talk of tapering."
Trader disclosure: On June 25, 2013, the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: Tim Seymour is long BAC; Tim Seymour is long SBUX; Karen Finerman is long AAPL; Karen Finerman is long BAC; Karen Finerman is long C; Karen Finerman is long JPM; Karen Finerman is long TGT; Karen Finerman is long GOOG; Karen Finerman is long M; Karen Finerman is long SPY; Karen Finerman is long MDY PUTS; Guy Adami is long C; Guy Adami is long GS; Guy Adami is long INTC; Guy Adami is long MSFT; Guy Adami is long AGU; Guy Adami is long NUE; Guy Adami is long BTU; Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck; AS OF 6/18 Brian Kelly is long US dollar; Brian Kelly is long Canadian dollar.
This story was originally published by CNBC.House Prices Are Now Back To Normal — Better Buy One Now Before Mortgage Rates Soar
We had a hell of a housing bubble there for a while, but thanks to a disastrous 30%+ collapse from the peak, prices are now pretty much back to normal.
How do we know?
We look at the charts!
Bill McBride at Calculated Risk has updated some of his excellent housing charts with today's latest Case-Shiller price information.
Here's what they show.
First, nominal prices have basically returned to their long-term trend.
And so have "real" prices (after adjusting for inflation).
Most importantly, house prices are now trading at a reasonable (if still slightly elevated) level relative to their "fundamental"--the rent required to lease a similar space. As you can see in the final chart below, the national price-to-rent ratio is now back in line with the long-term trend.
Of course, just because house prices have hit "normal" levels doesn't mean they can't go below normal. Also, house prices vary wildly by market, so don't necessarily get duped into thinking that prices in YOUR hood are back to normal.
And if you are thinking of buying a house--and you plan to borrow through the nose to do it--you should probably get cracking. At the rate interest rates are rising, your future mortgage is going to get more expensive by the day.
(Of course, higher mortgage rates, in turn, will likely slow the rise of house prices, so maybe you'll be fine...)
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