Redbook Same Store Sales Growth Improves March Hiring - before we talk about hiring in March, let's review Redbook's same store sales. Real consumption growth was only 1.2% in Q1. GDP growth was boosted by trade and inventories. That type of weak consumer spending growth is near recessionary levels.
Tariff Rate - Stocks Fall Slightly Tariff Rate - The S P 500 fell 0.16% on Wednesday as investors feared the outcome of the trade negotiations with China. That slight decline masks the sharp decline at the end of the trading session where the S P 500 fell 0.57% in the last half hour. On the day,
April Jobs Report - Creation Beats Estimates April Jobs Report - Job creation in April beat estimates and the past 2 reports saw positive combined revisions of 16,000. However, the details of this report weren’t great as I’ll review later in this article. As you can see from the chart below, job cre
Stocks Dive Sharply Stocks Dive - Investors were correct to be bearish on stocks in the near term. But we were wrong to say the trade news wouldn’t affect stocks. Trade worries caused a big decline on Tuesday after the market mostly recovered from its trade related selloff on Monday. This time the l
ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI Misses Estimates Weak Service Sector - Most of the economic data is coming in weak and missing expectations. With the market mostly past earnings season, these reports should be highlighted, causing stocks to fall. As you can see from the chart below, the April ISM non-manu
Initial Trade War Scare - Big Trade Related Swing Initial Trade War Scare - We’ve heard government officials repeatedly say the trade negotiations with China were going smoothly and a deal was near completion. We learned this weekend that’s not the case. To be clear, stocks have been helped by this
Job Cuts - Motor Vehicle Sales - Job Cuts Decline Job Cuts - Motor Vehicle Sales - The elevated Challenger Job-Cut average in Q1 described the labor market differently than the low jobless claims and the unemployment rate. As you can see from the chart below, even though total job cuts fell to 60,58
Stock Market - Big Rally On Friday So much for the potential stock market correction. On Friday, S P 500 rallied 0.96%, Nasdaq increased 1.58%, and Russell 2000 increased 1.98%. Amazon stock rose 3.24% after Warren Buffett revealed Berkshire Hathaway had a stake in the company. No offense to Warren
Chicago, ISM, Markit PMI - Chicago PMI Chicago, ISM, Markit PMI -In this article, I will be discussing a few relatively weak April PMIs. Chicago PMI fell from 58.7 to 52.6 which missed the consensus of 59 by a long shot. The low end of the consensus range was 57. For some reason economists didn’t no
