Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old economist from French academe has written a hot new book: Capital in the Twenty-First Century. A recent review describes Piketty as the man "who exposed capitalism's fatal flaw."

Just a very short post this morning to highlight an incredibly interesting chart that I put together. Below I have mapped out year-on-year changes in wages against the unemployment rate. The results are very interesting indeed.

In October 2013, 65.9 percent of 2013 high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities. Recent high school graduates not enrolled in college in October 2013 were over twice as likely as enrolled graduates to be working or looking for work--74.2 percent compared with 34.1 percent.

The averages have continued to melt downwards due to poor 1st quarter reporting and the situation in the Ukraine. Goldman's GDP forecast from 3% to 1% is also creating doubt. By noon the averages had recovered somewhat off the morning lows, but a dismal close appears to be the trend for today's session.

Premarkets were down -0.30%, oils and the US dollar were off prior to the opening. Ukraine tensions are still on the investors front burner along with some disappointing 1st quarter results.

This week I’ve had the pleasure of teaching the Professional Futures trader class in my hometown of London. As usual it’s been a productive time, working with the students and getting to grips at a more advanced level with the core strategy used by Online Trading Academy which recognizes institutional supply and demand levels low risk and high reward trading opportunities.

In the first quarter of 2014, mobile ads generated $1.3 billion in revenue, accounting for 59 percent of Facebook's ad revenue and 53 percent of the company's total revenue.

In retrospect, it is striking that the sovereign bond spreads of peripheral Eurozone countries surged while the economic conditions were gradually deteriorating.

"Austrian" economics owes its name to the historical fact that it was founded and first elaborated by three Austrians: Carl Menger (1840–1921), Friedrich von Wieser (1851–1926), and Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk (1851-1914). The latter two built on Menger, though Bohm-Bawerk, in particular, made important additional contributions.

China released its first quarter gross domestic product (GDP) data on Wednesday and, once again, the pundits are bemoaning the country’s slowing pace of growth.

Even though China and Russia have drastically increased their military expenditure over the course of the past decade, they come nowhere near matching the United States.

Premarkets were off -0.06% prior to the opening and little financial reporting except from China that was disappointing (see more below).

Researchers claim they have uncovered the source of Warren Buffett’s alpha. But their theory hinges on a crucial assumption.

Session head and shoulders appears to be unfolding on the SP500 at the noon hour or perhaps an acceding triangle that will break one way or another. This type of volatility should please the traders, but not so the investors looking to jump on the bull train early.

New home sales data for March 2014 was again nasty – the seasonally adjusted headlines are bad, and our analysis is essentially the same. This is an volatile data series, but the three month rolling average is now showing contraction year-over-year.

When the law of one price is violated it can be difficult to determine a product’s contribution to the CPI. Does a low price competitor discount also on quality, or are market frictions at play? This column examines key product characteristics to separately identify these effects.