Sitting for More Than Three Hours a Day Cuts Life Expectancy

There is mounting evidence that sitting can be dangerous for your health.  Even if you are active and prescribe to getting 30 minutes of physical activity each day.

In a report by BMJ Open sitting for longer than 3 hours a day it could reduce your life expectancy by 2 years.

Full story here in the WSJ.

• "Sedentary behavior is something we need to take note of beyond telling people to get 30 minutes of activity a day," said Peter T. Katzmarzyk, one of the lead researchers for the study and a professor of population science at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La.
• "Several studies show that when you're sitting, your leg muscles are completely inactive," he said. "When you're sitting and completely inactive, this is when you run into trouble managing blood glucose."
• Last year, scientists found that people who worked 10 years in sedentary jobs, or jobs that don't require a lot of energy expenditure, had twice the risk of colon cancer and a 44% increased risk of rectal cancer, compared with people who had never worked sedentary jobs.

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Investors’ 10 most common mistakes

In Barry Ritholtz's most recent Washington Post column he addresses what he sees as Investors’ 10 most common mistakes.  


Full article here, top 10 mistakes per Ritholtz listed below.


1. High Fees Are A Drag on Returns
2. Reaching for Yield
3. You (and your Behavior) Are Your Own Worst Enemy
4. Asset Allocation Matters More than Stock Picking
5. Passive vs Active Management
6. Mutual Fund vs ETFs
7. Not Understanding the Long Cycle
8. Cognitive Errors
9. Confusing Past Performance With Future Potential
10. When Paying Fees, Get What You Pay For

Fed Minutes Release

The Fed released the minutes from their June FMOC meeting.

Jon Hilsenrath of the WSJ issued this report that summarizes where he sees the Fed.  The question at large is whether or not we will see QE3?  And if so how much good would it actually do?

It would not surprise us to see an additional QE package but after seeing the results of the previous packages what is good for the markets may not be good for the economy.

Positive News with Initial Jobless Claims

There was a bit of good economic data that crossed the wires this morning which was the initial jobless claims ticking down for a second straight week.  The decline was attributed to low inventories in the auto sector and the fact that summer shutdown have either been pushed back, reduced, or postponed all together.

Consensus from Econoday

• Initial jobless claims fell 14,000 in the June 30 week to 374,000 which was well under Econoday expectations for 386,000. In a small offset, the prior week was revised 2,000 higher to 388,000 which however is still 4,000 lower than the prior week. The four-week average, at 385,750, was down slightly for a second straight week. Still, the average's trend versus a month-ago was not favorable and showed a 5,000 to 10,000 increase. Improvement for continuing claims, like that for initial claims, has stalled. Continuing claims in data for the June 23 week rose 4,000 to 3.306 million with the four-week average down 3,000 to 3.304 million.

The market obviously did not react positively to the news this morning as we opened down and have stayed down all day today.  Maybe it was the Bowles comment that we are indeed heading off the fiscal cliff.