United States Death, taxes and 3pm stock market rallies. But, investors are becoming more selective and nothing reflects that better than this chart comparing the market cap weighted S&P 500 (in orange) and the Value Line Geometric equal weighted index of 1700 stocks (in white). My friend Helene Meisler yesterday also pointed out that 120 stocks in the NASDAQ …
[Read more...] about Death, taxes and 3pm stock market rallies / Jobless Claims / Benign PPI, but…
United States In contrast to the solid 3 yr note auction yesterday (thus fading expectations of many more Fed rate hikes), the 10 yr auction today was terrible. The yield of 2.25% was well above the when issued of 2.235%. The bid to cover of 2.23 was well below the 12 month average of 2.44 and the smallest since November. Also of note, dealers got stuck with 35% of …
I've updated my investment ideas page. (members click here). As always, this week's write-up includes specific equity, ETN, and ETF analysis. Updates of note this week include a new long in a multi-national, some sales in some select foreign ETFs, and more. Here's a sample from this week's update, on FAANG: I talked last month about the potential importance of the …
North Korea I’m sorry but I’m not going to pontificate here on the geopolitics of North Korea and what it means. I’ll leave it to others but will say ‘China, please help’. The South Korean Kospi was lower by 1.1% but there is not a stock exchange in Guam for me to give you a response (said in jest). The Won is also having its worst day in a month and a half. The yen …
The 3 yr note auction was excellent. The yield of 1.52% was below the when issued by almost 1 bp. The bid to cover of 3.13 was well above the 12 month average of 2.81 and is the best since December 2015. Also of note, direct and indirect bidders took almost 75% of the auction vs the one year average of 61%, thus leaving the dealers with the smallest amount since at …
Job Openings Job openings in June totaled a record high of 6.163mm up from 5.702mm in May. Notwithstanding this, hiring’s fell by 103k m/o/m but this is very volatile month to month as it rose by 416k in the month prior. The hiring rate did hold steady at 3.7%. The demand for labor grew in construction, manufacturing, trade/transport, financial services, …
United States The NFIB small business optimism index for July rose 1.6 pts to 105.2 and is a touch above the year to date average of 104.8. The post election optimism is pretty much holding up as this index printed 94.9 in October and 98.4 in November. The standout was the Plans to Hire component which rose 4 pts to 19% and matches the best level since December 2003. …
[Read more...] about Small business / Trade / Kazumasa Iwata
Well, it finally happened. Revolving consumer credit (mostly credit cards) outstanding in June finally exceeded its April 2008 high. See chart. The 4.6% annual percentage change in Q2 compares with a savings rate that is at 3.8%, not far from the lowest level since December 2007. A reminder, core retail sales slowed to a 2.4% y/o/y growth rate, matching the slowest …
[Read more...] about Consumer debt levels, look at the pictures
Equities As we are close to wrapping up Q2 earnings, I need to put things into perspective as that is what I do. We hear all the time that the stock market is doing well because earnings are good but years of gains in stocks have been driven more by multiple expansion. In 2013, earnings were up about 15% GAAP and 11% non GAAP but the S&P 500 rallied north of …
Positives July payrolls surprised with a headline print of 209k vs the estimate of 180k. The private sector added 205k of this. The household survey added 345k jobs, about the same as the 349k increase in the labor force but the U3 unemployment rate did tick down by one tenth to 4.3%, matching the lowest level since February 2000. The U6 rate held at 8.6%. Hours …
[Read more...] about Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 8/4/17
Peter is the Chief Market Analyst with The Lindsey Group. He is Co-CIO at Bookmark Advisors, a member of the Advisory Services Network and a regular CNBC Contributor.
