Our Secular Trend and Cyclical Trend Scores are calculated using a large basket of fundamental, technical, internal and sentiment data. The historical data used by our models extend back to the market crash in 1929 and have enabled our STS to correctly identify every secular inflection points.

Premarkets were up this morning +0.50% but took a nose dive right after the markets opened to flat but in the green. By 10 am the averages had melted back up to +0.45% starting what may be a volatile sea-saw trading session.

Solar power is celebrating a big event. The solar panel turns 60 on Friday- but this birthday celebration will be unlike any other the industry has seen so far.

Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old economist from French academe has written a hot new book: Capital in the Twenty-First Century. A recent review describes Piketty as the man "who exposed capitalism's fatal flaw."

Just a very short post this morning to highlight an incredibly interesting chart that I put together. Below I have mapped out year-on-year changes in wages against the unemployment rate. The results are very interesting indeed.

In October 2013, 65.9 percent of 2013 high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities. Recent high school graduates not enrolled in college in October 2013 were over twice as likely as enrolled graduates to be working or looking for work--74.2 percent compared with 34.1 percent.

The averages have continued to melt downwards due to poor 1st quarter reporting and the situation in the Ukraine. Goldman's GDP forecast from 3% to 1% is also creating doubt. By noon the averages had recovered somewhat off the morning lows, but a dismal close appears to be the trend for today's session.

Premarkets were down -0.30%, oils and the US dollar were off prior to the opening. Ukraine tensions are still on the investors front burner along with some disappointing 1st quarter results.

This week I’ve had the pleasure of teaching the Professional Futures trader class in my hometown of London. As usual it’s been a productive time, working with the students and getting to grips at a more advanced level with the core strategy used by Online Trading Academy which recognizes institutional supply and demand levels low risk and high reward trading opportunities.

In the first quarter of 2014, mobile ads generated $1.3 billion in revenue, accounting for 59 percent of Facebook's ad revenue and 53 percent of the company's total revenue.

In retrospect, it is striking that the sovereign bond spreads of peripheral Eurozone countries surged while the economic conditions were gradually deteriorating.

"Austrian" economics owes its name to the historical fact that it was founded and first elaborated by three Austrians: Carl Menger (1840–1921), Friedrich von Wieser (1851–1926), and Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk (1851-1914). The latter two built on Menger, though Bohm-Bawerk, in particular, made important additional contributions.

China released its first quarter gross domestic product (GDP) data on Wednesday and, once again, the pundits are bemoaning the country’s slowing pace of growth.

Even though China and Russia have drastically increased their military expenditure over the course of the past decade, they come nowhere near matching the United States.

Premarkets were off -0.06% prior to the opening and little financial reporting except from China that was disappointing (see more below).

Researchers claim they have uncovered the source of Warren Buffett’s alpha. But their theory hinges on a crucial assumption.