Datastream Chart Blog

Sentiment among U.S. homebuilders is on the rise, climbing even more rapidly than are the home sales that underpin that reviving confidence level. A lot of eyes are following the U.S. housing market, with last week’s announcement that existing home sales declined by 1.7% in September to an annual rate of 4.75 million units on [...]

Last year, China clamped down on exports of sought-after rare minerals and sent prices soaring. That action now is bringing new supplies on stream, just as demand has flattened up, causing a decline in prices that is nearly as dramatic. Rare earth elements simply aren’t as rare as they once were, it seems. An influx [...]

As the eurozone crisis keeps growing and spreading, even as central bankers and policymakers battle to contain it, anxiety is growing that the Dutch may be among the next to feel the full impact. The Netherlands may be famous for its vast network of dikes that keep the sea from flooding the country’s low-lying farmland [...]

With the help of central bankers and their increasingly aggressive attempts to stimulate growth and ward off crises, investors felt comfortable returning to invest in risk assets in September. But questions about the longer term outlook linger. Investors rediscovered their appetite for risk during September, the final month of the third quarter, but only with [...]

The length and depth of the employment market’s recession continues to haunt U.S. politicians on the eve of the November elections. Like the Energizer Bunny, the “job market recession” just keeps going, and going, and going… It has been years since the stock market revived in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and since [...]

Greece and Spain may be grabbing the headlines, but the eurozone crisis is taking a toll beyond the borders of the ‘periphery’. When it comes to events in Europe, all eyes have been on the periphery – countries like Greece, Spain and Italy – where the worst fiscal and economic challenges exist, and on Germany, [...]

The remarkable rally in Spanish stocks over the last several weeks has largely closed the valuation gap between this part of the eurozone periphery and stocks in the rest of the region. Mario Draghi’s pledge to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro sent share prices in regions on the periphery of the eurozone [...]

BRIC correlation with the emerging markets universe is rising, fueling criticism of the decade-old strategy. For more than a decade, the idea of the BRICs – four emerging market powerhouse nations – has been one of the hottest, most buzzed-about investment concepts and attracted billions of dollars from both institutional and individual investors. Now, the [...]

Awaiting news on new stimulus measures from the Federal Reserve and the possibility of similar moves overseas, there’s a temptation to jump back into the stock market. There also are some very good reasons why that is a very bad idea, ranging from mundane valuation questions to the more offbeat indicators, such as Chinese electrical [...]

After the storms and uncertainties – and volatility – that have characterized much of 2012, August offered investors a relatively tranquil interlude and an opportunity for many to rediscover their appetite for risk. But few of the underlying economic problems have vanished, and some may well resurface as summer draws to a close. It was [...]