New Business Falls For The First Time In 10 Years
Weak October Motor Vehicle Sales October motor vehicles report was disappointing. Motor vehicle sales have plateaued in the past few years as you can see from the chart below. This October weakness isn’t the sign of a new downtrend. But it does mean retail sales growth will be hurt by the motor vehicles and parts…
Market Hits Extreme Greed (Dow, Nasdaq, & S&P 500 All At Record Highs)
Stocks Extremely Overbought The stock market again rallied significantly on Monday. Any increase is significant with the market at a record high and the S&P 500 up over 20% year to date (it’s up 22.79%). This has been a very strong run in the past few weeks. Since October 8th, the S&P 500 is up…
Highest Labor Force Participation Rate Since August 2013
Very Strong Jobs Report Because Of Positive Revisions Let’s look at it the October labor report. This employment report was very strong. It explains why stocks rallied sharply on Friday. And it fully explains why the CNN fear and greed index hit 80 on Friday. There were fears that this jobs report would end the…
MSCI ACWI 1 Point Away From Record As S&P 500 & Nasdaq Hit Record Highs
Hugely Positive Day For Stocks Friday’s action really stuck it to the bears and made them feel terrible. S&P 500 hit a new record high as it increased 0.97%. Stocks have had an amazing year and even the returns since the peak in January 2018 aren’t looking bad. S&P 500 up 6.75% from that peak.…
Manufacturing PMIs Improve In October
Job Cuts Increase (YTD Total Highest Since 2015) Job cut reports have been quite sold in recent months versus the start of the year. October reading wasn’t great, but also wasn’t as bad as earlier in the year. This report was basically more of the same. Job cuts are modestly elevated, but not worrisome. In…
Starbucks, Facebook, And Apple All Rally On Earnings
Stocks Decline Slightly On Thursday Stocks probably fell on Thursday because they were overbought. S&P 500 to fall 0.3%. Besides being overbought, the negative headline that hurt stocks was the Bloomberg report. It stated that China is doubtful there will be a long term trade deal. President Trump tried to calm the situation by tweeting,…
Low Inflation Supports Recent Rate Cuts
Very Weak Chicago PMI Bears are having a field day with the Chicago PMI report because the PMI fell from 47.1 to 43.2. That missed estimates for 48.3 and the low end of the consensus range which is 47.6. A big negative stat being put out is that 8 of 9 times the PMI was…
Stocks Finally Don’t Sell Off In Reaction To Powell’s Presser
Stocks Rise Slightly After FOMC meetings, Powell’s press conferences have sent stocks lower on average. This time Powell didn’t push stocks lower as the S&P 500 was up 0.33% on Wednesday. There wasn’t much room for him to surprise markets negatively. The market expected a cut and a pause afterwards. That’s what Fed and Powell…
125,000 Jobs Added & 1.9% GDP Growth
MBA Housing Applications On the heels of the very strong September pending home sales report, the MBA housing applications report in the week of October 25th showed solid improvement after yearly purchase growth dipped in the previous week. Specifically, the composite index had weekly growth of 0.6% after it fell 11.9%. Purchase index was up 2%…
Q3 Earnings Growth Is 2.03% With Earnings Season Almost Halfway Done
Small Reversal As Market Gets Ready For Rate Cut The stock market fell slightly on Tuesday which was a reversal from its early morning action. S&P 500 fell 8 basis points. From its morning peak, it fell 0.33% to the close. It was hurt by Alphabet all day which closed down 2.12% after missing EPS…