finance charts

The Fed has come out 9-1 in favor of rate easing i.e. capping medium-term treasury rates. The interesting bit is that while the Fed did the exact same thing in August out to two years, this announcement takes permanent zero out to nearly…

Watch gold as it pushes up against the downtrend line. Any hints from the Fed of QE3 could send it “to the Moon, Alice!” The Fed rejoining the party and the LTRO2 coming next month could be an explosive mix.

This is a great chart below via the Wall Street Journal. It shows the total debt to GDP ratios for the largest developed economies in the world broken down into four sectors: households, non-financial corporations, financial institutions…

Check out the below graphic which shows General Government Deficit/Surplus as % of GDP on the Y axis, Government Debt as % of GDP on the X axis, and the Government Debt in Euros as the size of the bubble. Pretty cool!

A chart of gasoline consumption and oil prices for the years 2000-2011.

So why are these big name retailers suing the big banks. It's this chart that appears to be the smoking gun. Credit card interchange fees are the highest by a large margin. Clearly those charges that go into the bank and credit card…

While many will be initially surprised by the data, on reflection it makes intuitive sense. In crude terms, wealthier countries typically work smarter--more capital intensively--than poor countries, not longer.

The Shanghai has put in its best two day performance since September ’09, rising 5.8 percent. After its post crash peak in August 2009, Chinese stocks have fallen almost 40 percent before hitting their lows last Friday.

Tough to bet on a triple top here. Looks like 82.60 is the next key level, which is the .618 fib retracement of the June 7, 2010/May 2, 2011 move.

A visual representation of how stocks in the S&P 500 fared in 2011 with Green for gains and red for losses