The economy is heading towards the sweet spot for the consumer as gas prices are declining and wage growth is accelerating. Real hourly wage growth was 0.7% in October. This improvement in the health of the consumer explains why Wal-Mart had same store sales growth of 3.4% in Q3 which beat estimates for 3.1%. TheCONTINUE READING

The concept of valuation is interesting because if you believe in the efficient market hypothesis, whenever stocks have multiple expansion or contraction it’s for a reason. This makes it impossible to outperform the market, in theory. Good thing we live in the real world. The more straightforward theory on investing, which allows for the possibilityCONTINUE READING

With the recent weakness in Europe and China, US investors have begun to worry about the potential for a global economic recession. We can’t get in the heads of all investors to determine why they are selling, but we can put two and two together. The US stock market is falling after weak global economicCONTINUE READING

The March BLS monthly jobs report was a disappointment in terms of total job creation as only 103,000 were added instead of the 175,000 expected. Furthermore, the report missed the lowest expectation which was for 112,000. It’s important to recognize this is a volatile data point. The February job growth was revised higher from 313,000CONTINUE READING