* maru dubshinki ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Curious: I would have thought that dividend would have been higher; > taxes were lowered significantly on them, and the economy has > registered mediocre gains, in which companies should be able to take > profits. But then I just heard that the producer price index has > fallen noticeably. So perhaps the profits are not that great after > all.
When I say short-term, I don't mean 1 month, I mean less than 10 years. But periods of 1 month, or even 1 year, are virtually impossible to predict. Even 10 years is short enough to be tricky, but it is long enough to have some chance at predictive accuracy. So although the PPI for finished goods dropped in December versus its value 1 month earlier, this single data point is virtually meaningless. On the other hand, PPI has been trending upward since 2002 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PPIFGS/31/5yrs By the way, PPI for finished goods is an index of the prices that producers (businesses, mostly) must pay for the materials and supplies that they buy in order to produce their goods. So if PPI were really trending downward (instead of what is likely a 1-month blip in an upward trend), then producer costs would be lower, which would tend to raise their profits. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
