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Weekly ETF Rewind - Week 48 (11/28/08)
Market Rewind — (Click Image to Enlarge/ Glossary) Markets built strongly on the prior week's reversal into the Thanksgiving holiday shortened week, leaving the S&P500 (SPY) up +19.1%. The period's biggest sector winners were Financials and Real Estate (XLF +34.8%; IYR +31.9%) on hopes of further credit easing and promises of federal consumer lending facilities (Washington Post - US Moves to Revive Spending). Among the tracked ETFs, only the US Dollar (UUP) registered a slight decline of -2.0%. Week 49 of 2008 holds a packed economic reporting calendar, as ...

Spinning Black Friday Retail Sales
The Big Picture — A few things you can count on every year around this time: Sales data for Black Friday will be touted by biased interest groups. They are invariably have an upside bias; Headline writers will get it wrong Survey data will be taken as the equivalent of actual sales; Strong forecasts will be subsequently proven wrong; Such is the current situation with the Black Friday sales data, with reports still trickling in from around the country. The WSJ goes for a hat trick of errors, starting with this article’s headline: • Holiday Shopping Off to Strong Start What’s wrong with this? First, as opposed to actual ...