Housing starts in October totaled 1.29mm, 100k more than expected and up from 1.135mm in September (revised up by 8k). It’s the best in a year and was mostly driven by a rebound in multi family starts which spiked by 111k to 413, the most since January. Single family starts rose by 44k but after dropping by 38k in September. At 877k, it matches the highest level in …
[Read more...] about Starts, Hurricane Rebound and Multi Family Too
Seeing Janet Yellen, Mario Draghi, Haruhiko Kuroda and Mark Carney on stage together today in Germany had me thinking that it’s the Committee To Lever Up the World and Destroy Price Discovery. It was February 1999 when Time Magazine printed a cover with Rubin, Greenspan and Summers and called them The Committee to Save the World. Voting Fed member Charles Evans is …
[Read more...] about The Committee to…/NFIB/Chinese Interest Rates/UK Inflation
Credit growth slowed in October in China as total loans extended totaled 1.04T yuan, 50b below the forecast, down from 1.82T in September but still up 17% y/o/y. Of this, 663b were bank loans with most of the balance coming from corporate bonds and trust loans. With the cause of the m/o/m slowdown in loans we of course don’t know what was a purposeful crackdown on …
[Read more...] about China/Looking for Some Fun?/Central Bank Speak
The UoM consumer confidence index for November fell to 97.8 from 100.7 and that was 3 pts below the estimate but comes after a 5.6 jump in October that put it at the highest level since 2004. Both main components of Current Conditions and Expectations fell by an equal amount m/o/m. One year inflation expectations bounced back by two tenths to 2.6% after falling by 3 …
[Read more...] about Confidence Falls Back to Near Average YTD
That didn’t take much. A slight fall in the stock market from all time record highs and one week of selling in high yield and I saw this last night from NRG Energy, a B+ credit: “NRG Energy announced today that is has decided not to proceed with the previously announced offering of $870mm in aggregate principal amount of senior notes in response to broader market …
I pointed out yesterday the market has become more selective as measured by the diverging internals which has coincided with another extreme level of bullish sentiment (could mean something, could be nothing). Also of note is the weakness in high yield credit. It looks like a blip and also could mean nothing but with high yield valuations egregious, pay attention. …
The 10 yr note auction was better than the lackluster 3 yr yesterday. The yield of 2.314% was a hair below the when issued of about 2.316%. The bid to cover of 2.48 was a touch above the one year average of 2.42. Also reflecting decent demand, direct and indirect bidders took 77% of the auction vs the 12 month average of 70%. Bottom line, I’ve attributed two …
[Read more...] about Longer End Auction Better Than Short End, Consistent With Flattening
Bullish sentiment got even more euphoric this past week according to the II survey. Bulls rose .9 pts to 64.4%. In 1987 it got as high as 65. With Bears remaining unchanged at 14.4%, the lowest in 30 months, the Bull/Bear spread is now 50 and is just .5 pt from matching the peak in early 1987. I’m saying again, when looking at the broad market this year, when Bulls …
[Read more...] about 50 pts and Bad Breadth/March on Eccles Building and Other Things
After some really mediocre Treasury auctions a few weeks ago notwithstanding multi year highs in yields (for the shorter term auctions), today’s 3 yr was also very ordinary. The yield at 1.75% was a touch above the when issued. The bid to cover at 2.76 was slightly below the previous 12 month average of 2.81. Direct and indirect bidders took 62.5% of the auction which …
The number of job openings totaled 6.093mm in September, slightly above the estimate of 6.075mm and little changed with August at 6.09mm. This is just off the record number of job openings seen in July 2017 at 6.14mm. The level of hirings (down by 147) and separations (down by 33) was certainly skewed by the storms. Those quitting rose after dropping in August. I …
Peter is the Chief Investment Officer at Bleakley Advisory Group and is a CNBC contributor. Each day The Boock Report provides summaries and commentary on the macro data and news that matter, with analysis of what it all means and how it fits together.
