Last Tuesday, I walked into my usual coffee shop and nearly choked—not on the espresso, but on the price. My regular medium latte had jumped from $3.75 to $5.25 compared to a few months back. Five dollars and twenty-five cents! For coffee! Standing there, clutching my overpriced caffeine lifeline, a question hit me: Are prices really going…
Imagine if you could measure the collective mood of 330 million Americans about their financial future, boil it down to a single number, and use that to predict when the economy might tank. Sounds like science fiction, right? Well, welcome to the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index—arguably one of the most underappreciated crystal balls…
Okay, so the check engine light—our initial unemployment claims—is blinking. We pulled the car over in our prior post, and the reading of 247,000 has us, and a lot of economists, looking under the hood with a concerned frown. But that first alert is just that: an alert. It tells you a problem just happened….
Picture this: You’re driving down the highway, and your car’s check engine light starts blinking. Do you ignore it and keep cruising? Or do you pull over to investigate before your engine seizes up completely? Initial unemployment claims are basically the economy’s check engine light—and right now, that light is blinking pretty frantically. The latest…
Welcome to the economic equivalent of a rom-com plot twist. In April 2025, the U.S. housing market decided to defy conventional wisdom by having housing starts rise 1.6% to 1.361 million units while building permits—which are supposed to predict future starts—fell 4.7% to 1.412 million units. It’s like having your GPS tell you to turn left…
If the Conference Board LEI is the economy’s smoke detector, then durable goods orders are like your neighbor’s car alarm—loud, attention-grabbing, and going off at seemingly random times, but occasionally signaling something actually important is happening. Welcome back to our deep dive into U.S. economic indicators, where we decode the signals that Wall Street obsesses…
Alright, let’s talk about the economy. If you’re like me, you hear a dizzying cloud of data points every day—GDP this, inflation that. It feels like trying to read tea leaves in a hurricane. But what if we had a better way to see where things might be headed? Enter the U.S. Leading Economic Indicators…
Understanding labor market dynamics is crucial for gauging economic health and market sentiment . Jobless claims data, released weekly by the U.S. Department of Labor, provides one of the most timely indicators of economic conditions. This comprehensive guide demonstrates how to leverage Python and the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) API to retrieve, analyze, and visualize unemployment claims…
Welcome to the 10th post in our Python for Finance series! We’ve covered significant ground, from ratios to qualitative analysis. Catch up here: Now, we pivot towards valuation, starting with a cornerstone metric for Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis: Free Cash Flow (FCF). FCF represents the cash generated by a company after accounting for all operational needs and…
Hello again, and welcome to the eighth installment of the Python for Finance series! We’ve journeyed from basic ratios to complex data retrieval and even dipped our toes into qualitative analysis by fetching earnings call transcripts and doing basic keyword searches. Catch up on the series here: In Post 8, we saw that keyword counts lack nuance…