Friday’s failure on healthcare and the flattening yield curve (among other things) resulted in a sharp 7.2 pt drop in the number of Bulls in the weekly Investors Intelligence survey to 49.5 which is the lowest point since November 9th (which captured sentiment pre election even though it was released the day after). Almost every single one though went to the …
[Read more...] about Bullish Sentiment Cools Down, Mortgage Refis, Some Overseas Data
The March Conference Board Consumer Confidence index jumped to 125.6 from 116.1 and that was well above the estimate of 114. This is the best level since December 2000 (during that time it peaked at 144.7 in January ’00 and was 61 in March ’03). I want to caution all that the cutoff for this survey was March 16th so thus will not reflect any changes in opinion after …
The trade balance on goods only (now being released before the complete goods and services trade deficit) saw a deficit of $64.8b in February which was $1.6b less than expected and January was revised down slightly. The fall in the deficit though was not for the right reasons as exports fell by .1% m/o/m and imports were down by 2.1%. Imports of auto’s fell by 8.3% …
[Read more...] about Trade data and inventories, Auto issues
It was back on February 17th when Marketwatch had a story titled “Here’s why you shouldn’t buy a stock ever again.” I highlighted this in a note last month as the flood of index money was coming in post election. If there was ever a story that should have alerted any stock market contrarian it was that one and just maybe we had reached peak obsession with passive/low …
[Read more...] about “…what happens if this trend reverses?”
The 2 yr note auction was decent. The yield of 1.261% was about in line with the when issued. The bid to cover of 2.73 was a touch above the previous 12 month average of 2.68. Direct and indirect bidders took almost 64% of the auction vs the one year average of 58%. This auction comes with the 2 yr yield at the lowest in a month. Bottom line, this part of the curve …
The Dallas manufacturing index in March fell to 16.9 from 24.5 and that was below the estimate of 22.0. After a multi yr stretch of negative prints coincident with the collapse in oil prices, the index though is in positive territory for the 6th straight month. It also compares with .6 in October and of course reflects both the rising rig count and the victory of DJT …
I will leave the post mortem with others on what went down with changing the ACA. Let’s instead focus on the real world economic and market impact. With the law now remaining in place for the foreseeable future, individuals will continue to suffer from double digit insurance premium increases and very high deductibles. On the business side it is the smaller ones where …
Positives: Core shipments within the durable goods report and which gets plugged into GDP, rose 1% m/o/m, above the estimate of up .2%. They are still down though 1.6% y/o/y. That estimate beat on shipments did lead to a one tenth increase in the Atlanta Fed GDPNow survey for Q1 to 1%. New home sales in February totaled 592k, 28k more than expected and up from …
[Read more...] about Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 3/24
The Markit manufacturing and services composite index for the US fell to 53.2 in March from 54.1 in February. That level is now the lowest since September and thus gives back all of the post election gain. For reference, it was 54.9 in October, the same level in November and got as high as 55.8 in January. Breaking down the components has manufacturing at 53.4, …
Non defense capital goods orders ex aircraft, aka core capital spending, in February fell .1%, worse than the estimate of up .5% and only partially offset by a two tenths revision up in January. The y/o/y change is essentially zero with a .2% rise. See chart below for the absolute dollar level of spending and you can see that it’s no different than where it was in …
[Read more...] about Core durable goods orders fall/ Tax reform
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.
