finance charts

JPMorgan recently performed a study on the composition of portfolios managed by life insurance companies. The study looked at the top 20 life insurance firms using their regulatory filings. These are the portfolios set up to support…

The Economist: "Over the past 30 years, China’s total fertility rate—the number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime—has fallen from 2.6, well above the rate needed to hold a population steady, to 1.56, well below that…

The jobs numbers were disappointing. From a policy perspective, the hope is that we can keep stimulus in the queue long enough so that the cyclical hiring trends pick up before overindebted consumers get fatigued again. But underneath…

The German 2-year note has dropped below Japan's for the first time ever, with the German 2-year note yielding 0.109%, a record low. Japan's 2-year note yield is 0.111%. Meanwhile, the 10-year bund is at 1.638%, nearing the record low of…

This chart from the Wall Street Journal explains visually what worries me about the supercharged run up in the S&P500. While the index is increasing, earnings growth is not.

Take a look at the long-term charts of crude oil and natural gas. The historical oil-to-gas price ratio had ranged from 6:1 to 10:1 before the economic crisis. Since one barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of the 5.825 million…

Here's what I see: job destruction during a cyclical downturn followed by massive job destruction after the Lehman failure followed by a steady climb toward tepid job creation. Take a look.

Last week, I wrote a bit more on my prediction of margin compression in the US and how Apple fits in the weekly newsletter. This story in today's links from the Washington Post was really good on that with regard to Apple.

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) in the U.S. increased 2.9 percent in February before seasonal adjustment. These BLS charts and table illustrate what is driving the increase.

If and when the demand for credit increases, so too will the money supply.