Regional Fed Indexes Signal An Incoming Weak ISM Report
Regional Fed Indexes - Stocks Fall Slightly When the S&P 500 was down, the headlines blamed worries about tariffs. When stocks were up, the Fed got the credit as their Minutes were released Thursday. Clearly, this is the wrong way to look at the market because the tariff news won’t come out until Friday and…
October New Home Sales Fall 12%
October New Home Sales - Amazon Takes Everything Before we get into October new home sales, let's review the overall market action over the past few days. Amazing is gaining an increasingly large piece of the retail pie. It is nabbing a huge percentage of retail growth. As you can see from the chart below,…
Powell Statement - Stocks Misinterpret
Powell Statement - Huge Rally On Powell’s Speech Powell’s speech followed along with what the vice chair stated earlier in the week. It wasn’t a policy change. But the stock market accepted it as a dovish turn. Predicting how markets react to Fed statements is tough. If I would have had the speech a few…
Same Store Retail Sales Growth - Best In 12 Years
Same Store Retail - Department Store Black Friday Shopping Bears will claim Black Friday holiday shopping was weak because traffic to stores fell, while bulls will point to great online sales growth. Personally, I think it was a great holiday shopping season. Online sales growth had been sagging a bit recently. However, Black Friday is…
Markets Await Trump’s Summit With Xi
Markets - Another Rebound, But Only For Big Caps The S&P 500 managed to close positive after spending some of the day negative. It would have been psychologically tough for the bulls to withstand a decline after the big rally on Friday which occurred. Stocks were extremely oversold. With this 0.33% increase in the S&P…
Trade Growth Projected To Slow To 3.7% in 2019
Trade Growth - Decent November PMI Flash, But Growth Is Weakening Every economic report should be reviewed with the understanding that economic growth is slowing. Good reports are either outliers or possible green shoots for a re-acceleration of GDP growth. The October Markit PMI flash reading was solid even though other reports such as durable…
Stocks Rally Despite GM Layoff Announcement
Stocks Rally - Big Monday Rally There are often big rallies within corrections and bear markets. Monday was an example of this as tech led the market higher. S&P 500 was up 1.55%, Nasdaq was up 2.06%, and Russell 2000 was up 1.16%. This was an oversold rally as the CNN fear and greed index…
Durable Goods Report Signals American Economy Officially In Slowdown?
Durable Goods Report - Orders Driven Down By Defense & Aircrafts The October durable goods report was weak. This signals hard economic data is supportive of the recent correction in stocks. The headline matches the takeaway from this report. But the underlying results need to be examined. That one time crash in defense orders isn’t…
Jobless Claims Spike, Increasing Fears Of A Recession
Jobless Claims - Stocks Give Back Early Gains Before getting into Jobless Claims, let's review the week thus far. After a horrid start to the week, it looked like Wednesday would have solid gains heading into the Thanksgiving holiday. However, stocks fell in the afternoon which limited their gains. The Dow fell 0.95 of a…
Housing Starts Grow 1.5% But Miss Estimates
Housing - E-commerce Sales Growth Let's go over e-commerce sales before getting into housing starts. Q3 e-commerce sales growth was only 3.1% on a quarter over quarter annualized basis. That fell from 3.6% in Q2. Q2’s growth rate was revised down from 3.9%. This is in tune with the October retail sales report which shows…