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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gregor_us who wrote (126)	2/17/2004 12:07:47 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Heinz on US equities last week's AAII poll has seen its bear percentage shrink to 15% as well - similar to the II figure. also, still no put buying in evidence, and volatility premia ( mostly a measure of risk perception ) remain incredibly low. however, when i said last week that NO-ONE is looking down, i hadn't yet seen the latest CoT report, which contained some ammunition for the bulls: big speculators hold a large net short position in the spoos. note however that the commercial hedgers are net short as well, albeit only by a token amount ( i.e., they look to be neutral ) . the other side of the trade is inhabited exclusively by small traders, however, since the reportable limit is 1,000 contracts, you'd be considered 'small' with a 900 contracts position as well ( which would require you to put up over $31 million in initial margin ) . also, i've noticed that the non-reportables in the spoo have ceased to be a contrary indicator about 1 year ago. i'm at a loss as to why, but it's an empirical fact.

To: gregor_us who wrote (126)	2/17/2004 12:15:00 PM
From: mishedlo	Respond to of 116555

Industrial Production An in-line number Industrial production for January came in at 0.8%, in-line with the Bloomberg consensus. However, the prior few months were revised down to a slightly lower level. All major categories showed gains, but as we noted this morning following the February Empire State Index, production has been growing a little faster than consumption in recent months, so inventories are a little higher than desired and production should at least moderate in the coming months. The slight downward revisions allowed the 10-year Treasury to add a few ticks to this morning's modest gains.

To: gregor_us who wrote (126)	2/17/2004 12:18:58 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Jobless Recovery By JON E. HILSENRATH Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Frances Bernadette Parker ... in the summer of 2002, she had a life-altering decision to make: Leave the company with a buyout package or keep working and end up with more responsibility but not more pay. "It was more beneficial to me personally and stresswise to take what they were offering," she says. With that, Ms. Parker became a job-market dropout, one of nearly two million adult Americans between the ages of 25 and 54 who have left the labor force since 2001. These dropouts aren't employed. Nor are they officially unemployed, which is defined as people who are actively seeking work but can't find it. Instead, Ms. Parker and others like her represent a shadow phenomenon of the jobless recovery. Some, though not all, are so discouraged they've stopped looking. Others, like Ms. Parker, are taking early-retirement packages or they are going back to school, collecting disability, moving in with family or taking care of loved ones. The common denominator for many is that the slow-growing job market is forcing them to change. Of course, there have always been large numbers of working-age Americans who don't work for a paycheck, for a wide variety of reasons. But their numbers have risen to 75 million from 70 million during the past three years, and they include many who don't fit into the traditional categories. And the percentage of working-age Americans between 25 and 54 who are either working or looking for work has fallen during the past year below 83%, to levels last seen in the late 1980s. Among college graduates, the labor-force-participation rate was 78.4% in January, down from 79.7% in 2001. For the population as whole -- including teens and adults older than 54 -- the participation rate had fallen to 66.1% in January from 67.3% at the height of the economic boom, marking the largest and most persistent decline in labor-force participation since the early 1960s. Some economists believe such numbers are helping to hold down the unemployment rate by taking people who would otherwise be classified as unemployed out of the labor force. The jobless rate fell to 5.6% in January from 6.3% last June.