Consumers - 69% Expect To Be Better Off Financially Next Year
Consumers - Small Caps Rally S&P 500 only increased 7 basis points on Monday. But the Russell 2000 was up 0.84%. Russell 2000 is up 12.03% year to date, while the S&P 500 is only up 8.1%. Either the Russell 2000 is outperforming because it has a higher beta than the S&P 500. Also the…
Retail Investors Have Come Back To The Stock Market
Retail Investors Are Back Previously in a recent cycle, retail investors were still bearish on stocks. That has changed. The timing of these surveys is critical because retail investor optimism has exploded in the past couple weeks. Retail investors missed the rally in the first few weeks of 2019, but have since piled into stocks.…
Twitter Stock Falls, But The Company Is Making Smart Changes
Twitter Earnings Specifics Twitter’s earnings report caused its stock to fall from $34.16 to $29.95 in 2 days which is a combined loss of 12.3%. It’s an interesting reaction because the firm beat earnings and revenue estimates. EPS was 31 cents which beat estimates for 25 cents. GAAP operating income was $207 million which was…
Stocks Drop - About To Have A 2nd Leg Lower?
Stocks Drop Substantially, Finally Stocks were extremely overbought earlier this week. With the 0.94% decline in the S&P 500 on Thursday, they came closer to normal levels. The CNN fear and greed index fell from 65 to 62. We aren’t out of the woods of this correction yet. But now I’m a little less bearish…
Jobless Claims Worry Some Investors
Jobless Claims - 2 Motor Vehicle Sales Reports Before getting into jobless claims, let's review some vehicle sales reports. Because of the government shutdown, the motor vehicle sales reports from December and January were both released on Monday. This December report was solid, which helps Q4 GDP and the January report wasn’t. Meaning it hurt…
S&P 500 Stocks - 88% Are Above Their 50 Day Moving Average
S&P 500 Stocks - Snaps Its 5 Day Winning Streak Finally, the S&P 500 fell slightly on Wednesday as its 5 day winning streak ended. CNN fear and greed index stayed at 64. S&P 500 was down 0.22%, Nasdaq was down 0.36%, and Russell 2000 fell 0.15%. Best 2 sectors on Wednesday were technology and…
Recession - 23.6% Chance Within Next Year
Recession - Report Updates Initially after the government shutdown ended, the BEA came out with release dates for a few unimportant economic reports from Q3. On Wednesday, the release dates of the reports we care about were announced. The “initial” Q4 GDP report will come out on February 28th. It will take the place of the…
Overbought Stocks Reach Extreme Levels
Overbought Stocks - Retail Investors Miss Out On Extreme Rally The stock market continued its rampant rally, which is reaching extreme technical levels, on Tuesday. The S&P 500 was up 0.47%, the Nasdaq was up 0.74% as Alphabet stock reversed its morning selloff and rallied 1.16%, and the Russell 2000 was up 0.18%. Google’s TAC payments…
Wage Growth Finally Beats Rent Growth
Wage Growth Accelerates Wage growth is important because at this point in the cycle with the labor market tightening and inflation modest, workers have a chance to get real pay increases. Also, last year we saw the Fed raising rates partially in reaction to wage growth even though it hasn’t translated into higher inflation. In…
Alphabet Stock Falls On Increasing Capex
Alphabet Stock - Another Big Rally: Stocks Are Overbought 2019 has been a dream year for stock investors after 2018 was a nightmare for diversified investors. While 2018 wasn’t a disaster for stocks, very few asset classes increased in value. Amazingly, the S&P 500 is now up 8.7% year to date. Many investors didn’t foresee the…