Roughly one in ten workers have filed for unemployment in the last three weeks. Here’s a look at estimated unemployment by state: Three states might have unemployment rates over 20% right now: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. 15 states (and the District of Columbia) likely have unemployment rates over 15%: Alaska, California, District of Columbia,…
The loss of hospitality jobs in March 2020 is unprecedented. When we have April data in a month, we’ll see the U.S. economy suffered more hospitality job losses in two months than during the entirety of the last recession. The leisure and hospitality sector includes businesses like hotels, restaurants, bars, casinos, amusements parts, museums. Some…
The summer starts and ends with a holiday. With the latter holiday now behind us I thought I’d take a moment to provide an update on my views of the current state of the financial markets. On August 7th – I moved an additional 5 percent of my portfolio into cash – and am still…
Equity markets continue to reach for new highs in 2013 – up over seven percent year-to-date and hitting new highs on Wednesday. As enter first quarter earnings seasons, it seems like an appropriate time to share my expectations for equity markets in 2013. Most of the following comes from the presentation I give in early March each…
In The Short View in yesterday’s FT James Mackintosh writes about where we are in the current cycle (see Share price moves echo March 1987). One particular statistic stood out to me. Mackintosh writes, “For those bought up on the story of the Great Crash of ’87, such a comparison suggests it is time to…
Over the last 13 years, I’ve refinanced several different mortgages seven or eight times using no-cost refinancing options. With a traditional no-cost refinance, you take a loan with an interest rate slightly above the current market rate. In exchange for taking a rate 1/8th to 1/4th higher than you could get in the market at…
Since the election, the Fiscal Cliff as dominated the media cycle. Here is Google Trend data depicting web search interest for the term “Fiscal Cliff” over the last twelve months in the United States. Unsurprisingly, web searches have spiked significantly. This has been true not only in the United States, but also in the rest of…
I haven’t quite solidified my personal goals for 2013, but one of them will be to write/blog more frequently. I was thinking – though unreasonable it might be – that I’d set a goal to blog daily. This might be a failed effort already considering it is now 1:20AM on the 2nd of January on…
The East Coast is set to welcome tropical storm Sandy this week. The potential damage is expected to be especially pronounced in the the Mid-Atlantic and New York tri-state areas. Here are a few of the recent headlines:
This storm adds to the dozens (if not hundreds) of natural disaster events over the last 24 to 36 months which have been 1-in-50 or 1-in-100 year events. Here are just a few of the events I’ve tracked over the last 2-3 years:…
You can read the entire study here.