Jim’s first topic this week on the Big Picture is “Oil – the Bottom, the Recovery, the Shock”. Oil is certainly more intertwined with the economy and the stock market than ever. When oil fell from $100 a barrel to much lower levels, it was thought to be good for the economy, as it put more dollars in consumer’s pocketbooks. But there is a downside as well. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been cut from the oil companies’ capex budgets, and close to 300,000 workers have lost their jobs in the energy sector. This week the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued their mid-term market report. Jim and John will discuss the prospects for oil prices to have bottomed, if we are on the road to recovery, and also look at the possibilities of a future oil shock. In the next Big Picture topic, What the LEI’s Are Telling Us, Jim breaks down the latest leading economic indicators, and discusses what they are foretelling about the months ahead. The final Big Picture topic is “Things You Will Lose in the Not-Too-Distant Future”. Jim discusses the rapid changes in technology and some of the items that may begin to disappear in the years ahead.
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