Investors appear worried that the economy is not keeping up with the eight-month old rally in the stock market.  Disappointing outlook and grim economic data are further fueling concerns that markets are ripe for a pullback and a full-blown economic recovery would take time.

On Friday, the 30-share Dow Jones industrial average fell 14 points, or 0.1%, to close at 10,318.16.  The broader S&P 500 index closed 0.3% lower at 1091.38 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq finished the day at 2146.04, off 0.5%.  On the week, the Dow average managed to hang on to gains, registering a paltry 0.5% advance.  The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq fell 0.2% and 1%, respectively.  On the New York Stock Exchange, 1.1 billion shares exchanged hands, with declining issues ahead of those that advanced in price by a three-to-two margin.

Last week’s disappointing reports on housing and weak forecasts from technology companies had antsy

Overseas markets declined. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said the ECB plans to start pulling back some of its stimulus programs as the economy begins to recover.

With little U.S. economic news to help sway the market Friday, the dollar is again pressuring stocks. A strengthening dollar drives down foreign demand for commodities, which are often traded in dollars. It also can depress U.S. exports which become more expensive as the dollar rises.

That can hurt the price of energy and materials stocks that are closely tied to commodities and companies with large operations overseas.

A disappointing earnings report from computer maker Dell Inc. is also weighing on the market. Dell said after the market closed Thursday that sales of its computers to big businesses remain sluggish. Its quarterly revenue and profit missed analysts’ expectations.

As

The report below comes courtesy of Nouriel Roubini’s team of analysts at RGE, taking a look at some recent monetary policy trends in advanced economies. This content is excerpted from a longer piece, “Global Monetary Policy Review,” which includes in-depth analysis of when the world’s emerging markets might shift interest rate strategy. However, the longer piece is available only on a subscription basis.

Last week was a busy one for the Federal Reserve (Fed), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE). Policymaking is tricky when different asset classes are sending very different signals about the economy. However, those different signals are themselves a byproduct of policy. In the US, bond markets are discounting a sluggish U-shaped recovery or even a double-dip recession, while risky markets are signaling a strong V-shaped recovery ahead. Which is right? While RGE leans towards the

Two Sagging Economies… Two Laid-Back Banks

by Martin Denholm, Senior Editor

Anemic. Stagnant. Plodding.

Pick your favorite… it doesn’t matter. They all describe the state of the British and Eurozone economies.

Two weeks before the official third quarter U.K. GDP figure is released, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) delivered a somber verdict. The group says it actually didn’t grow at all, confounding those who said the economy started growing again.

Cue a fresh round of some good, old-fashioned British grumbling.

The culprit: a 2.5% fall in industrial production in August, as oil demand dropped. Still, neutral is better than reverse – a gear that Britain had driven in for 2009 up to that point, posting a 2.4% first-quarter slump and 0.6% second-quarter decline.

It’s not alone either. Its European neighbors are also backpedaling. The latest quarterly figure from Eurostat shows that the

The just-concluded Group 20 (G20) meeting left us with a chorus of very “prudent” governments and central bankers singing the praises of easy monetary and fiscal conditions. So where can we take refuge when all the central banks in the world print money and governments run deficits in order to spend like drunken sailors? The answer is gold.

Fortunately for us, we foresaw this scenario a while ago. On April 20, I recommended that investors diversify their portfolios by adding the SPDR Gold Trust ETF (NYSE: GLD).  The fund is up about 14% since that recommendation, but it’s not yet time to sell, as there are still a number of factors working in gold’s favor.

For starters, there is more and more talk of the U.S. dollar losing some of its luster as a reserve currency.  But this debate is moot for the moment.  The reality is

This post provides links to a number of thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find interesting.

• John Hussman (Hussman Funds): Conditional expectations and September seasonality, September 14, 2009. One of the arguments we’ve seen a lot lately is the idea that September and October have historically been the worst months for the stock market, coupled with rebuttals by bullish analysts along the lines that the discussion of this historical tendency by the bears makes it likely that nothing bad will happen this time. The fact is that yes, on average, the combined September-October period has historically produced slight declines for the S&P 500 whether you look back since 1870, 1900, 1940 or 1970. But the variance around that slightly negative return is large enough that it’s really misguided, in my view, to base predictions on it.

•

European orders increase more than expected… Was Cash for Clunkers necessary?… Roubini sees a ‘W’ not a ‘V’… Lessons from Mary Poppins…And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… And welcome to another week, the last one in August! The weather here in St. Louis has shifted toward fall, which is my favorite season. Chuck is flying back home from San Francisco today and will be back in the saddle tomorrow. Both he and the big boss, Frank Trotter, sent me some great Pfennig pfodder over the weekend so lets get right to it.

The dollar continued to drift lower throughout the trading day on Friday, with the commodity currencies of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand leading the way. Confidence is returning to the markets, and investors are once again moving out of the ’safe havens’ of the Japanese yen and US dollar. The reports coming out of Jackson Hole indicate that central bankers believe

One of our favorite, as well as one of the best indicators that investors can follow is that of interest rates.  Since we are global macro traders we follow interest rates across the globe for every country that we can find reliable data.  We track short and long rates for 58 different countries for use in many of our models as well as for other indicators like global and regional yield curves.

As you can see in the chart below (click to enlarge) short term rates for the G-10 are low.  In fact right now there are five countries that are following a zirp (zero interest rate policy) and consequently their 90 day rates are down under .5%.

G-10 Short Term Interest Rates

After dropping significantly throughout

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) raised its growth outlook for industrialized countries for the first time in two years and said the United States would experience a quicker recovery than Europe. However, the group also said that central banks around the world should maintain exceptionally low interest rates with little regard for inflation over the next two years.

After predicting a 0.1% economic contraction for its 30 member nations in March, the OECD said growth would reach 0.7% in 2010. The OECD also said this year’s economic contraction would be 4.1% compared to its earlier forecast of a 4.3% decline.

“The good news is that economic activity in OECD countries is reaching bottom, following the deepest decline since the Second World War. In fact, this is the first Economic Outlook in two years to revise up previous projections for OECD economic growth compared with the previous Outlook.”

The world’s power elite, the Bilderberg club, is getting together today at the five-star Nafsika Astir Palace Hotel in Greece. US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will be there. So will World Bank president (and Goldman Sachs alumnus) Robert Zoellick; head of Deutsche Bank Jo Ackermann; and European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet. The topic of discussion is the global economic meltdown.

Notes can reveal that the pre-meeting booklet for the meeting is predicting “either a prolonged, agonising depression that dooms the world to decades of stagflation, decline and poverty – or an intense but shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”