See-Saw Day On Wall St

It was up. Then it was down. Now, it's up again, but not enough to push stocks into the green for the day!

Stocks Collapse Following Good News?

This may seem strange, but one day after GDP growth of 4% was announced, the stock market plunged 317 points. Is this the beginning of the consequences for so much market manipulation by the Fed?

"U.S. stocks sustained heavy losses on Thursday as traders ditched a wide swath of assets, leading the blue-chip average to hit the flat-line for 2014." Fox Business

Cost of Beef Goes Parabolic

This is hard to believe, but it's real.
Jason Lusk:

• "That leaves supply-side issues.  Cattle inventories are at their lowest level since the 1950s. Because of technological advancement, we don't need as many cattle today today to produce the same amount of beef as we did in 60 years ago.  Still, fewer cattle numbers means less beef, and less beef supplied means higher prices.  Contraction in cattle supplies can be explained by a number of factors, such as drought in the plains states that limited the amount of grass and hay available and higher feed (mainly corn) prices due to drought, ethanol policy, etc., which pushed pushed more cattle to slaughter several years ago, leading to smaller inventories today.  Feed prices have now come down off their highs but cattle prices are still rising, partially because producers are holding back breeding stock to rebuild inventory.  Still, if high feed prices were THE answer, I would have expected chicken prices to rise in tandem with beef and pork (at least over part of the period), but as the above graph reveals, they didn't."

"In short, the reasons are: (1) supply and demand, which has been affected by weather and increased Asian demand, (2) government intervention, and (3) crony capitalism."
Why Beef Prices Are So High