Strong Jobless Claims & Slight Decline In Inflation
Jobless Claims DO NOT Signal A Recession Jobless claims are the thorn in the side of the bears. We keep hearing from the bears about how jobless claims will spike, but it never happens (on a sustainable basis). Let's discuss 2 important misnomers heard from the bears. First is the bears say initial claims are…
Stocks Rise On Trade Hopes That Might Be Dashed
Stocks Rise On Trade Hopes? Stocks rose on Wednesday because of hopes for a trade deal. There was a report that China would accept a partial deal. This is the type of report many don’t buy. Mostly because the actions from both sides speak louder than these so-called reports. Both sides want to appear willing…
Fed Minutes Imply That Fed Is At Market’s Will
Neutral September Fed Minutes September Fed Minutes weren’t that dovish. Especially considering the Fed cut rates at that meeting. And the Fed funds futures market is pricing in another cut in October. Despite the mixed signals given from the Minutes, stocks rallied. Fed expressed worries about the market getting ahead of itself. Ironically, the market…
Possibilities Of A US China Trade Deal Seem Grim
Stocks Fall On Trade Worries Stocks fell on Tuesday because of the negative news surrounding trade talks between America and China. News events on Tuesday have made the lead up to the trade negotiations almost as bad as it can be. Optimism about a deal has waned considerably. Investors, including myself, previously predicted a deal…
Small Business Confidence & PPI Inflation Fall
Another Good Redbook Reading We are currently in a state of uncertainty in terms of consumer spending because retail sales growth is improving, while consumption growth is falling. Their real growth rates were nearly the same in August, but they were heading in the opposite directions. PCE is wider in scope than retail sales. However,…
US To Meet With China & Europe As Tariffs Are About To Be Implemented
Stocks Fall Slightly On Trade Worries The stock market fell slightly on Monday because of fears progress on a US China trade deal won’t be made in the negotiations later this week. Latest report is Vice Premier Liu He told dignitaries he won’t offer commitments on reforming Chinese industrial policy or government subsidies. Personally, I…
Q4 Earnings Estimates Fall Sharply
Consumer Credit Falls In August, the increase in consumer credit outstanding fell from $23 billion to $17.9 billion which beat estimates for $17 billion. Decline in credit growth was caused by revolving credit which was up $9.4 billion in July and down $2 billion in August. A slight decline in revolving credit card debt makes…
Non-Supervisory Production Workers See Relatively Strong Wage Growth
Goldilocks Sends Stocks Higher The stock market soared on the Goldilocks jobs report on Friday. Investors were curious how the market would react to weakness. Apparently, the market is fine with slowing payrolls growth. It’s not necessarily a new trend, but weakness in manufacturing wasn’t a new trend. Yet stocks fell after the weak ISM…
Goldilocks Jobs Report Sends Stocks Higher
Another Bad ISM Report September ISM services report was like the manufacturing PMI. It fell and both reports were paired with an improving, but still weak Markit PMI. A key differences between the services and manufacturing PMIs from ISM are that the services PMI was above 50 and that the services report showed much more…
Big Reversal As Market Prices In More Rate Cuts This Year
Big Reversal As October Rate Cut Locked In The stock market was down sharply Thursday morning because of the weak ISM non-manufacturing report, but then it rebounded throughout the day as the odds of a rate cut this month increased. The odds of 2 cuts by the end of the year also increased. I was…