Weak Control Group Retail Sales: Just 1.4% GDP Growth?
Weak January Retail Sales Report Lowers GDP Growth Estimates January retail sales report wasn’t great mostly because control group sales growth was revised lower and missed estimates. Even still because of the tougher comp, there wasn’t much change in the 2 year headline growth stack. There wasn’t a big spike like what could have occurred…
Tesla Prints Money To Fund Its Expansion
Modest Thursday Decline After the number of coronavirus confirmed cases increased due to a change in methodology, the stock market fell modestly on Thursday. S&P 500 was down 0.16% and the Nasdaq fell 0.14%. Russell 2000 was up 0.26% as it outperformed the large caps for the 3rd straight day. It has been on a great…
Real Wage Growth To Suffer From Increase In Energy Inflation
Energy Boosts Headline Inflation January CPI report was more of the same type of reading we have been seeing this cycle. Inflation stayed low which means the Fed will keep rates low. Those who don’t follow this report closely will be surprised by the jump in energy inflation since oil prices cratered in January because…
New Definition Increases Coronavirus Cases
Coronavirus Looms Again With its 0.65% rally on Wednesday, the S&P 500 is now on a 3 day winning streak and has increased in 6 of the past 7 days. However, an updated news report on the coronavirus this evening threatens to ruin the party in stocks. Because of the new way China is measuring…
Mortgage Activity Highest Since 2005
Mortgage Purchase Applications Growth Continues Composite index for mortgage applications was up 1.1% in the week of February 7th after rising 5% in the prior week. With rates being near their record low, it’s no surprise the refinancing index is spiking. Refinance index was up 5% after increasing 15% in the prior week. As you can…
Health Insurance Stocks Near A Record High (No Bernie Worries)
New Record For Stocks Despite Coronavirus With the S&P 500’s 0.17% increase on Tuesday, it hit yet another record high. It’s up 3.93% year to date which is just 7 basis points below my original full year price target. U.S. stock market is being boosted by the expectation that the U.S. consumer will power the…
Job Openings Plummet (Why That’s Not Scary)
Redbook Sales Growth Falls: Consumers Are Financially Confident In the week of February 8th, Redbook same store sales growth fell from 5.7% to 4.8%. That’s not a disaster, but it’s less growth than you’d expect to see if the consumer was on fire like the confidence surveys suggest. Recent Gallup polls were remarkable as the…
Energy, Apple, & Dem Election
Coronavirus Continues To Cause Trouble Predictions that energy would do well this year were blown out by the coronavirus which lowered Chinese demand for commodities. Furthermore, even though Apple has a big presence in China, its stock hasn’t reacted negatively to the news. That’s the worst case scenario for the trade. It went wrong due…
Sorry Bears, 2020 Is A Cyclical Upturn
Very Long Expansion We’ve recently seen a decrease in personal income growth, which has led to an increase in credit card usage in December. Specifically, personal income growth has fallen from 6.1% in July 2018 to 3.9% in December 2019. It's okay that the consumer taking on some debt this cycle because there has been…
Labor Market Reaches A New Expansion High
Stocks End 4 Day Winning Streak The stock market fell modestly on Friday in spite of the solid jobs report. Before you question the market’s sanity, remember that there just was a big rally back to new highs. In 4 days, the S&P 500 increased a combined 3.73%. It was a quick recovery from the…