The number of job openings in February totaled almost 7.1mm, a still robust number of needed workers but down from 7.6mm in January, almost 500k less than expected and the least amount of availability since March 2018. Hiring’s dropped by 133k and is down for the 3rd month in the past 4 and brought the hiring rate down by one tenth to 3.8%. The quit rate held at …
Valuation check/Small business
As we are on the cusp of a slew of earnings reports in the coming 6 weeks and with the amazing stock market rally over the past 3+ months I'm including a valuation refresher for a metric other than a P/E ratio for the S&P 500 just to provide context. It's instead the P/S (price to sales ratio) to avoid the games people play with earnings per share. Keep in mind …
Some things going on
While the bank earnings on Friday will certainly be the main focus this week, I'd highlight what MSC Industrial and Fastenal have to say on Wednesday and Thursday respectively in their earnings releases. They are great proxy's for the manufacturing/industrial/construction world. Last week I talked about the Citi Economic Surprise Index and separately the Semi stock …
Payrolls beat, helped by gov’t/Smooth it out
March payrolls grew by 196k, 19k more than expected while the two prior months were revised up by 14k. The private sector component though had less of an upside print as jobs here rose by 182k, 5k more than expected. Similar to what ADP said and in contrast to ISM, manufacturing shed 6k jobs instead of hiring a net 10k as forecasted. February was revised to a …
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Initial claims remain low
Initial jobless claims remain very low. They totaled 202k for the week ended March 30th, 13k less than expected and down 10k from 212k last week. This brings the 4 week average to 214k from 218k last week. That's the lowest since early October. Continuing claims, delayed by a week, fell to the lowest since early January. Bottom line, even in the recent …
Bonds reflecting now, stocks later?
We've talked a lot about the differing messages that bond and stock markets have been sending about the economy and outlook. Maybe it's just as simple as the bond market curve flattening is just reflecting the current slowdown that is clearly upon us while the stock market is just believing it's temporary and a rebound in growth will occur in coming quarters. …
ISM services slips
After the February 3 pt jump in the ISM services index to 59.7 as the government reopened and followed two months of declines from 60.4 in November, this index fell to 56.1 for March and that was 2 pts less than expected. That’s the lowest print since August 2017. After jumping by 7.5 pts in February, new orders fell back by 6.2 pts. Backlogs did rise 1 pt though to …
ADP jobs gain miss
ADP said only a net 129k private sector jobs were created in March, 46k less than expected, only partially offset by a 14k upward revision to February. For the 2nd month, small companies with less than 20 employees shed workers. In contrast to the jump in the employment component in the ISM manufacturing figure on Monday, ADP said 2k manufacturing jobs were lost in …
I have a lot to say today
I'm going to whine again about the lack of the SALT deduction and its negative impact on the economy after seeing the stats yesterday on Manhattan residential real estate. According to Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Douglas Elliman, transactions in Q1 fell to 2,121, the least in 10 years and down 5.2% y/o/y. Remember back what Q1 2009 was like. It's also the 6th …
Cap ex, eh, but…
Core February durable orders were a touch less than expected when we include the January revision. Non defense capital goods ex aircraft fell .1% m/o/m and that was 2 tenths less than forecasted but January was revised up by one tenth to a gain of .9%. Core shipments, plugged into GDP, was slightly better and that could lead to a slight tweak up in the Q1 GDP …
Peter is the Chief Investment Officer at Bleakley Advisory Group and is a CNBC contributor.