Business

Consumer Confidence among Over-55 Americans is at its lowest since September 2014. On the other hand, confidence among the Under-35 generation is its highest in 9 years (as the lowest income earners saw the largest surge in confidence in history - from 44.2. to 73.4). The 'optimism' gap between young and old Americans has never, ever been greater...

Which is ironic since it is the 55-and-older generation who have record jobs (while those 25-54 have collapsed since the great recession...

By EconMatters

   Prediction Game

2015 was supposed to be another double-digit growth year for the market, instead as showed yesterday, it was the "year when nothing worked."

In the words of BMO's Lowell Yura, "this year is a wake-up call to think about lower returns for the next several years," warning that "investor expectations for both equities and bonds have been [mistakenly] elevated by recent history." Jim Bianco added that 2015 could be the worst for asset allocation funds since World War I: "for the first time since 2001, none of the major asset-classes returned more than 10%."

While it is two months delayed (and home sales have tumbled since) and before The Fed raised rates, Case-Shiller reports that home prices rose 0.84% MoM in October, beating expectations and the biggest monthly rise since March. While the YoY gains barely missed expectations at +5.54%, Miami, Tampa, and San Francisco all saw the biggest gains as Chicago, Cleveland, and San Diego saw the biggest drops in home prices.

It appears we are playing out the same seasonally-adjusted pattern as 2014...

Charts: Bloomberg

From stocks (Dow up 460 points from pre-Christmas lows), to FX (total craziness in EUR and GBP); and from Bonds (2Y underperforming this morning!) to Commodities (Copper soaring almost 3%, Crude spiking), it appears markets have gone nuts this morning...

Stocks - buy 'em, you'll love 'em...

VIX futures getting crushed...

FX markets - dump Cable, dump EUR

Treasuries - Short-dated bonds getting monkey-hammered...

And commodities are spiking... (despite USD strength)

Charts: Bloomberg