Elon Musk Charged With Fraud The biggest news on Thursday was that Elon Musk is being charged with fraud by the SEC. This caused Tesla stock to fall 12.66% after hours. The image below explains the SEC’s case against Musk. It pertains to the August 7th tweet where he stated “Am considering taking Te
Jobless Claims - Hurricane Florence Boosts Jobless Claims As I predicted, the jobless claims report was the first one to show weakness related to hurricane Florence. Jobless claims were 214,000 which was a 12,000 increase from the previous week. The 4 week moving average only increased 250 to 206,25
Stocks Fall - Bank Stocks Fall Along With Treasury Yields The action on Wednesday was interesting. Both the sectors that like rate hikes and the sectors that don’t like rate hikes did poorly. The financials like rate hikes. However, they fell 0.99%, possibly because the Fed removed the term ‘accommo
Hawkish Hike This was a hawkish hike as the Fed increased its economic projections. We no longer need to review the changes to the FOMC statement line by line, because it has shrunk since Powell has taken the helm as chair. There was one change, other than the month and policy change. This continued
Banks Underperform The best two sectors were consumer discretionary and energy which increased 0.59% and 0.57%. The communication services index was up 9 basis points in its second day. Worst sectors were utilities and consumer staples which fell 1.22% and 0.73%. This action is related to heightened
Richmond Fed Index - New Record It appears manufacturing activity in September was strong based on the regional Fed indexes and the Markit flash reading. There could be weakness in the service sector as was shown in the flash Markit reading. As you can see from the chart below, the Richmond Fed manu
Brent Oil Price Increase Drives Inflation Expectations The worst sectors were real estate and consumer staples as they fell 1.89% and 1.5%. The best ones were energy and tech which increased 1.47% and 0.31%. As you can tell, oil prices and interest rates affected stocks on Monday. Brent oil peaked a
Inflation - Weak Services Push Composite Flash PMI Lower The flash September composite PMI from Markit was weak because the service sector missed estimates sharply. The composite PMI was 53.4 which missed estimates for 55 and the prior report of 55. This was below the lowest estimate of 53.8. This s
Stock Investors - Slight Selloff On Friday The optimism about the trade war is way overdone. New tariffs make it more likely there will be an economic slowdown in late 2018 and early 2019. The stock market is also way overbought even after the mild decline on Friday. The Dow was the only index that
