New filings for jobless benefits rose by 27,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis last week—the biggest weekly increase in nearly two months. New claims, as a result, moved above the 400,000 mark for the first time in five weeks. It all adds up to a disappointment, but it’s too soon to wave the white flag. This is a volatile series and so no one should read too much into any one number. Meanwhile, the four-week moving average is still well below 400k, and so it’s not obvious that the recent downtrend has been broken.
Daily Archives: April 14, 2011
3,768 Estimates Of The US Equity Risk Premium
What’s the outlook for the excess return on US stocks over the “risk free” rate? The answer varies with the forecaster, of course. For some insight into how much the estimates of the equity risk premium vary, two finance professors and an assistant recently polled thousands of professors, economists and assorted analysts and companies via email, receiving 3,768 responses with specific forecasts for 2011. Among the findings, detailed in a new working paper: the average risk premium “used by professors and companies is higher than the one used by analysts.”