finance charts

Here’s a cool graphic from the EIA on what drives the price of a gallon of gasoline in January 2012. We paid $4.20 last night in California!

Great chart from the recently released Economic Report of the President. We suspect the Great Depression housing bust didn’t have the government props to soften the blow as we do today, which, therefore, on a relative basis, makes the…

Note all components are above the 10-year Treasury yield.

The latest Gallup poll shows the approval rating for Congress at a record low 10%. 86% disapprove.

Great data from Bespoke. Looks like Portugal is the odd man out as the only government in which its CDS spreads have widened this year.

The jobs data were the best we have seen in a long time and well above expectations. This and the first upward revisions to the annual revisions were a pleasant surprise. While a lot of people are in disbelief because of a present bearish…

The chart below from the blog Pragmatic Capitalism shows the U.S. Federal government deficit for each quarter since 1952. As you can see, almost the entire period is marked by deficits.

Interesting couple of charts on the S&P500. The top shows the narrowing upward channel in which the index has traded since the beginning of the year relative to the wider medium-term channel. The collapse in volatility was the direct…

Interesting couple of charts on the S&P500. The top shows the narrowing upward channel in which the index has traded since the beginning of the year relative to the wider medium-term channel. The collapse in volatility was the direct…

If you are a retiree, you're not happy these days. Five years ago, you were getting a decent return on your fixed income investments. But since then, the Fed has trashed the fixed income market by reducing interest rates to zero percent for…