Quietest Market Since 1998
Drawdowns Of 10% Are Rare In Stocks & Bonds Even though the major indexes were all down on Monday, the S&P 500 still broke the record for the longest streak without a 3% correction. In searching for a volatility metric that the current streak hasn’t breached, I found the chart below. It shows the maximum monthly…
Big Earnings Week Ahead For Tech
Q3 Earnings Look Great So Far This is the first week where earnings summaries include a significant portion of reports from Q3. As of the end of last week, 17% of S&P 500 firms reported earnings. According to S&P Dow Jones, the insurance firms’ hurricane weakness caused Q3 financial sector earnings to fall from $7.04…
Latest Economic Reports Affected By The Weather
Beige Book Same As Usual On Wednesday the Fed released its Beige Book report. The report showed more of the same trends the economy has been going through. For example, the majority of Fed districts said there was only moderate wage pressure despite the low unemployment and jobless claims which we’ll review later. The Fed needs…
The Dow, Fed Chair Decision, and Tech Monsters
Dow Very Overbought Stocks had a fantastic run on Friday. A sign of the times was how GE stock rallied in the face of disappointing results to close up 0.97%. EPS was 29 cents, missing the estimates for 49 cents and the full year guidance was cut from $1.60-$1.70 to $1.05-$1.10. The S&P 500 was…
Is President Trump Leaning Towards Selecting Powell As Fed Chair?
Weak iPhone 8 Results Push Apple - AAPL Lower Thursday was unusual for the stock market because for the first time in a while, the S&P 500 opened down about 0.5%. It shows how quiet the market has been that 0.5% is considered a big move. The selloff was driven by AAPL which I said…
Is Everything Expensive?
The chart below is interesting because it appears that profit margins are near their current peak. I expect Q3 margins to be down, but that’s only because of hurricane related weakness. My inkling is that the numbers here might be different because they are pre-tax margins. The stats I look at are all after taxes.…
Lowest Volatility Since The 1960s
Single Family Housing Not Available In previous articles, I have been discussing the lack of construction of single family homes which is causing prices to increase. The chart below shows the inventory of single family homes for sale on a seasonally adjusted basis. As you can see, inventory levels are the lowest since 1994. This…
Fed Chair Pick To Be Made In 2 Weeks
Small Caps Stall The stock market was mixed on Tuesday. One of the new trends we’re seeing is weakness from the Russell 2000 which was down 0.34% on Tuesday. It’s now down 7 of the last 10 days. Even with that weakness it’s off less than 1% from its peak. This was to be expected given the…
Not Enough Leverage For A Recession?
With the business cycle lasting over 8 years, many are wondering when it will end. Because the last recession was so severe, people have been making a business out of spreading fear. There were two large drops in about a 10 year period making some think bull markets always end in devastation. Many people avoided…
ECB Considering 30 Billion Euros Of Tapering
After a few months of coming close, the yield curve has finally met the flattest point since before the last recession. The difference between the 10 year and the 2 year bond yield is 76 basis points which is tied with the summer of 2016 for the lowest difference this cycle. Meeting the low could…