Business

The market is rising… or is it?

The number of individual S&P 500 companies above their 200-day moving averages (200-DMA) has rolled over.

Put simply, the broader market is NOT confirming this move in stocks.

So overall the momentum is leaving the market... but still the stock market index is going higher...

Why is this?

Because the market is being propped up by just a handful of Tech Companies.

Those companies are: Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet.

Authored by Catherine Mann and Dan Andrews, originally posted op-ed via Bloomberg.com,

When lagging firms don't go bust, they hog scarce resources and drag down productivity.

The global economy is picking up steam, but that’s deceptive. The foundations of expansion are soft, marked by weak productivity growth and inequality. The two are related.

Tracking the disappointing, and downward revised March jobs report, when as a reminder the US added only 79,000 jobs, today's JOLTS report showed a decidedly more benign labor market in the month of March, with good news on the job openings front, offset by another month of hiring weakness.

Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The Powers That Be are perfectly fine with your transition to proletarian debt-serf.

Yesterday we covered the usual suspects in the decline of the middle class as a financial-political bulwark against oligarchy / dominance of rentier elites: globalization, automation and the asymmetric distribution of rewards favoring the few over the many.

Two months ago, when quoting the CEO of cell phone insurer Assurant, who appeared on Bloomberg TV to discuss business trends, one of his quotes caught our attention: “the reality is, half of Americans can’t afford to write a $500 check,” Colberg said. We decided to look into the CEO's claim about the woeful state of US finances. What we found is that according to a recent Bankrate survey of 1,000 adults, 57% of Americans don’t have enough cash to cover a mere $500 unexpected expense. Turns out the CEO was right.