The Boock Report

Weekly Summary

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Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 5/29

Positives 1)Purchase applications to buy a home continued higher according to the MBA. They rose 8.6% w/o/w and are now up 8.7% y/o/y with mortgage rates still sitting around record lows. Refi's were unchanged w/o/w but still up 176% y/o/y. 2)New home sales in April totaled 623k, well better than the estimate of 480k and actually up from 619k in March but …

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Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 5/22

Positives 1)All 50 states have at least something reopened, even NJ and NY. 2)This is still a really poor number but better than what was seen in April (anything is). The May Markit manufacturing and services PMI bounced to 36.4 from 27 with most of the gain coming from the services sector which rose to 36.9 from 26.7. Manufacturing improved by 3.7 pts to …

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Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 5/15

Positives 1)//twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1260946980710350855 2)The preliminary May UoM consumer confidence index rose to 73.7 from 71.8 and that was above the estimate of 68. The swing factor on the rise was the Current Conditions component which jumped to 83 from 74.3 after falling by 29.4 pts in April. The Expectations component fell by 2.4 pts …

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Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 5/8

Positives 1)Moderna's coronavirus vaccine will proceed to Phase 2 study. Phase 3 could begin in early summer of 2020.  2)We'll see how it goes but more states and countries elsewhere are further reopening.  3)Initial claims totaled 3.17mm, 170k more than expected but down from 3.84mm last week. As awful these figures are, it is the least amount of claims …

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Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 5/1

Positives 1)Gilead's remdesiver shows some promise. Vaccine hope with the story out of Oxford University that starting at the end of May they will be doing human trials on 6,000 people with an inoculation that proved successful on monkeys. Also, news on the testing front is getting better as CVS and Walgreens give news on how they will role out its testing …

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Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 4/24

Positives 1)Every one has an opinion on the partial reopening of the Georgia economy today but it will certainly be a lesson learned on how it goes for the rest of us in coming weeks as other states announce reopening steps. We are of course also watching other states in the US and Austria, Denmark, Sweden and others, particularly those in Hong Kong, …

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Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 4/17

Positives 1)Gilead's initial, albeit early, success with remdesivir in a small sample size. 2)Austria and Germany draw out and begin specific reopening steps. Plans are coalescing in individual US states. The rate of spread is slowing. The PGA will play a golf tournament on June 11-14th. 3)Painful to see but not as bad as feared. Initial claims totaled …

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Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 4/10

Positives 1)The patient counts continue to drop in the hot spots of Europe, particularly Italy. Austria, Italy, Denmark and Norway are laying out plans to gradually reopen over the next month. NY might be passed its peak. The acceptance of wearing masks as things do reopen is becoming more widespread. A Hong Kong microbiologist who advises the Hong Kong government …

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Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 4/3

Positives 1)Signs of curve flattening/bending are taking place in Europe and certainly in most areas of Asia. We hope we are only weeks away from seeing that in the parts of the US that got hit first like NY and CA. We are seeing more shutdowns, slowing the spread. More test kits are being shipped, some that will give a result in 15 minutes. Broader …

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Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events: 3/27

(no February data was included) Positives 1)Congress passes the $2T bill that will provide short term relief for many households and businesses.  2)The Fed takes further steps to re-liquefy parts of the credit markets and also announces that they will outright be buying IG corporate bonds (in a roundabout way). The ECB takes off issuer limits in its new …

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