Peter Boockvar's Blog

Aug 16 – The University of Michigan consumer confidence index took a hit in August as it fell to 92.1 from 98.4 and that was below the estimate of 97. It’s also the lowest since January and as seen in the chart below, it’s no higher than it was in late 2014...

Aug 7 – After a 1.5% month-over-month decline in the June German industrial production figure vs. the estimate of .5% with declines widespread in manufacturing, mining, intermediate goods, capital goods, consumer goods and energy...

May 17 – The UoM May consumer confidence index jumped to 102.4 from 97.2 in April and that was well better than the expected print of no change. This is the highest since January 2004. All of the confidence gain was in the Expectations component which jumped 8.6 pts...

Apr 9 – The number of job openings in February totaled almost 7.1 million, a still robust number of needed workers but down from 7.6 million in January, almost 500,000 less than expected and the least...

Feb 04 – What confidence data leads to we'll of course have to see but at the minimum if CEOs are more cautious, it naturally leads to a hesitancy on hiring and investment until they become more confident again. Please...

Jan 8 – The December NFIB small business optimism index did slip by .4 points to 104.4. That is the fourth straight month of declines that took the index down by a total of 4.4 points and it now sits at the lowest level since October 2017...

Dec 11 – Here is an updated chart of U.S. net worth as a percent of disposable income after the Fed released its third quarter flow of funds statement last week. We are now at 700 percent (699.9 percent to be exact). The late 1990s bubble...

Nov 6 – The October ISM services index fell 1.3 points to 60.3, however it was 1.3 points better than expected and is the second best print since 2005. Internally, new orders were little changed but backlogs did fall five points to a three month low...

By Peter Boockvar – For those paying attention to gold, the net speculative position as of last Tuesday, according to Friday’s CFTC data, went net long for the first time since August 7th. After nine weeks of shorts that got to the most since 2001, the net...

By Peter Boockvar – The National Federation of Independent Business released its Small Business Optimism Index for September that moderated to 107.9 from 108.8, which was the record high. Higher wages continued as current compensation...