Portfolio Mgt System, U.S. Jobs/Mortgage Delinquency

Portfolio Management System, U.S. Jobs/Mortgage Delinquency

Portfolio Management System

In yesterday's e-mail I announced the introduction of a three tiered Portfolio Management System to StockResearchPortal.com including (1) My Investment Portfolio, (2) My Trading Portfolio, and (3) My Watched Stocks.  All three 'work' in exactly the same 'user friendly' way.  To create one or more of these Portfolios - which, like our 'My Stock Alerts' component are accessible only by the Subscriber that creates them - it is necessary to add transactions (or 'current holdings' as a 'first entry') to the 'Transactions Table' associated with that Portfolio.

When you first visit a 'Transactions Table' add a company and an initial share position (showing an average cost for that position as its purchase price) if you already own shares in that company.  That company will then appear in a drop-down at the top of the transactions table along with 'Add a Company'.  You subsequently can access that company's individual transaction table by clicking on the Company name in the drop-down, and add subsequent purchase and sale transactions to that Company's transaction table.  The number of shares you own at any point in time and average cost of those shares is calculated automatically as you add transactions, as is the related Portfolio Summary Table.  Add a second company by clicking on 'Add a Company' in the drop-down and repeat the process.  The second (and third, and fourth, etc) Company you add likewise will be shown in the drop-down where you can access it and added further transactions to its 'Tranasctions Table'.

We encourage you to create Portfolios, and to visit them often.  They are continuously updated throughout each trading day.

U.S. Jobs/Mortgage Delinquency

An article yesterday titled 'How Unemployment Affects Mortgage Delinquency' concludes the correlation coefficient between U.S. unemployment and U.S. mortgage delinquency is weak but definitely shows a tendency - and concludes that the U.S. economy can't 'get on a good footing' until housing stabilzes, and that U.S. housing can't get 'out of trouble' until U.S. employment improves.  I would have been surprised if any such 'correlation study' concluded otherwise.  Readers know I am not optimistic U.S. job creation will occur in a meaningful way for some time, if ever.  I don't think a study is necessary to conclude there is a direct correlation between U.S. consumer spending and U.S. economic recovery, and I don't thing U.S. house prices will return to pre-2008 levels unless the U.S. experiences serious inflation going forward.  Finally, I believe U.S. annual inflation beyond, say, 3% would prove counter-productive to U.S. economic recovery as I think it would negatively impact U.S. net trade deficits, U.S. Government deficits at all government levels, and both the employed and unemployed U.S. consumers.  I have been asked by a reader to comment on how I think the U.S. economy might or will prospectively affect the Canadian economy.  I will do that in an e-mail early next week.

Other Commentary

I was asked yesterday by a reader for my comments on what seems to him to be a dichotomy between the U.S. deficits and reported strong quarterly earnings by U.S. corporations.  That is not something I had focused on, but now having done that don't think the two things ought to be compared as a measure of much of anything.  The U.S. Government deficits are a function of government revenues and expenditures - both being country specific.  Earnings generated by U.S. corporations are (1) subject to many subjective accounting decisions, and hence in my view can be misleading when viewed on a 'one' quarterly or even a 'one' fiscal year basis, and (2) in the case of mulit-national corporations represent an aggregation of earnings and losses generated in multiple countries.  I will be interested in hearing from you (at info@stockresearchportal.com) if you think a country's deficits and earnings reported by companies headquartered inthat same country ought to be correlated in some manner, and why you think that.