Jefferies

Mid-Week Update 09-23-09

Commodities have been rising across the board. Since bottoming in late February, the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index, a widely used gauge of prices for almost two dozen commodities, has rallied almost 30 percent – helping to fuel a rally in energy and material stocks. There are several reasons why this rally is one of the strongest on record. Materials have reacted to the re-emergence of growth in developing economies around the world; their appeal as a hedge against a weakening dollar has contributed strongly to the ongoing demand.
 
We don’t want one important commodity, fertilizer, that’s not part of the CRB Index, to be overlooked. Shares of fertilizer producers, including Growth Portfolio members Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (POT) and Mosaic (MOS), have rallied sharply, up 100 percent and 135 percent from their lows, respectively.
 
The stocks have shown strength despite weak near-term fertilizer demand and low production volumes. With grain prices under pressure, given the global economic environment, farmers have seen their profits shrink. This forced them not only to cut their budgets for heavy farm equipment, but for crop feedstocks as well.
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Market Update 08-04-09

On Monday, the S&P 500 Index eclipsed the 1,000 mark for the first time since last November, boosted by the release of some more positive economic data points and continually rising commodities prices. Treasury yields gained 4 percent yesterday to 3.63, signaling higher risk tolerance in the market.Read more...

Market Update 08-04-09

The stock market continues to steamroll higher, with S&P yesterday crossing the 1000 mark for the first time in nine months. What has been most unusual about the move in equities—and there are plenty of red flags from where we stand—has been the fact that it has occurred even as commodity prices were in the midst of an historic run of their own.
 
The Reuters/Jefferies-CRB Index, for instance, is up by a third from February lows. This is only the third occasion in Post War history in which we’ve experienced such big advance in commodities.
 
The first of these took place in 1950. At the time, the U.S was the undisputed economic powerhouse, growing at double-digit rate as the world rebuilt from the devastation wrought from the recently concluded global conflict. Oil prices back then were the equivalent of about $23 in today’s terms. Stocks, not surprisingly, soared during this time.
 
The next time commodities has rise by a similar amount as today was in 1973. Here, again, the U.S. economy has humming along with “real” (inflation-adjusted) GDP was rising at a 6.4 percent clip.
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Market Update 11-11-08

Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that the unemployment rate had risen to 6.5% in October, the highest rate since 1994. More than 1 million American jobs have been lost so far in 2008, and the job loss rate is accelerating- over half of those jobs were lost in August, September and October. Clearly this bad news is confirmation that we're in a recession. The worst of the financial crisis is over, but it will take time for the liquidity injections to work its way through the economy and companies' bottom-lines. In the meantime, Main Street is feeling the full brunt of the crisis.

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Market Update 08-05-08

Today, the Federal Open Market Committee decided to leave the benchmark interest rate at 2 percent- a move that was widely anticipated. This was the second consecutive meeting in which the rate wasn't changed. The statement accompanying this decision cited both downside risks to growth and upside risks to inflation. While the Fed still expects inflation to cool later this year, the outlook remains uncertain.

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Weekly Update 05-05-08

  (L-R) Delegation members Ma...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

We seem to be witnessing a battle between two sets of indicators at the moment, each with its own opinion on which way the market is headed.

On the one hand, as we have been expecting, our Long-Term Master Key has dropped below -80%, which is a “sell” signal. On the other hand, we have a lot of technical and economic evidence that argues against a sharp fall in the market.

In your last update, we explained why a so-called “sell” signal in the Long-Term Master Key would not send us into a panic mode. Before you start dumping good stocks, let's review the situation.

In the first place, the market has already retreated significantly from its highs last fall, perhaps in anticipation of this week's “sell” signal. So prices today are quite reasonable.

We should also remind you that there's nothing magical about the -80% figure. It's just a rule of thumb based on historical data. But we can't really say that there's much difference between -80% and -79%.Read more...