Unemployment in Review

A regular monthly feature of this website is a chart overlay of monthly unemployment and the S&P 500 since 1948, the year Uncle Sam began tracking labor statistics. A fascinating chart at CalculatedRisk examines the data since 1969 on the unemployed for more than 26 weeks (see chart). This prompted me to overlay the same data since 1948 on the S& P 500. Click on the thumbnail at right for a larger version. The implications for further market recovery aren't encouraging. I'll be adding this chart to my regular monthly unemployment updates.

Market Timing with Weekly Moving Averages

As regular visitors to the website know, I keep an eye on monthly moving averages for potential buy/sell signals. Of course there are many momentum timing systems out there. The Ocean Portfolio blog is an interesting website that focuses on 4, 18 and 39-week moving averages for investment decisions — an interesting alternative for those who prefer to trade more frequently.