Business

The only thing that truly trends is humans extrapolating their rates of return emotionally. Everything else will regress to the mean at some point.  

In an out-of-the-blue tweet perhaps aimed at reassuring his base that his not 'with the banks', President Trump took aim at Wells Fargo this morning...

Fines and penalties against Wells Fargo Bank for their bad acts against their customers and others will not be dropped, as has incorrectly been reported, but will be pursued and, if anything, substantially increased. I will cut Regs but make penalties severe when caught cheating!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2017

Despite soaring stock market values and an endless array of postive survey data from various estabishment-based entities, University of Michigan confidence tumbled in November.

Consumer sentiment in the U.S. cooled for a second month. While current conditions managed to improve, expectations for the future slumped...

Assuming that the BLS' estimate of avg hourly warnings growing only 0.2% in November is accurate, it would imply that - as has often been the case - the bulk of job growth in November took place in minimum-paying and other low-wage jobs. However, a breakdown of jobs added by industry shows the contrary to expectations, the bulk of new job creation, and 3 of the 4 top category, were not in the "low wage" bucket.

In a continuation of the recent theme shown by the labor market, the BLS reported that November payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 228K, beating expectations of 200K, if lower than October's downward revised 244K (from 261K) while September was revised up from +18,000  to +38,000. With these revisions, employment gains in September and October combined were 3,000 more than  previously reported.