The bad news is pretty evenly spread across the globe although Japan is the worst performer; presumably because of the political dispute with China which has disrupted production.As the graph shows, industrial stocks have been on a steady, although not precipitate, downtrend relative to the world market for the last 8 months.
But with analysts talking about yields breaking out of a 17-year downtrend (see chart), that might not happen for a while.
The rise may have been affected by the after-effects of the fuel crisis, but the latest figures suggest "a weaker downtrend in unemployment", says Ciaran Barr, an economist at Deutsche Bank.An encouraging augury for inflation is that wage pressures remain subdued.
Chris Watling of Longview Economics points out there has been a remarkable regularity to the past three cycles a 29-year downtrend, followed by a 32-year uptrend and another 31-year downtrend lasting to the present.
Stocks continued the downtrend at the start of trading on disappointing government reports of new home sales and orders for durable goods, but rebounded in the final hour.
"Over the last 12 months or so, there's been delays to the plant construction, there's been a delay in the issuance of the license and a slide in the rare earth price over the same time frame, which have all contributed to the downtrend in Lynas' share price".
The downtrend in Mr. Obama's forecast has gotten a bit sharper since last week, when his re-election chances peaked at close to 80 percent in the model.
"That is the significant takeaway: the dollar downtrend is very much intact".
"In order for labor market concerns to be allayed, we need to see the earlier downtrend in claims re-established," Mr. Shapiro said in a note.
"We've had some upticks in some data series," he acknowledged, adding: "We think that's a little bit of calm before the downtrend resumes.
