Communication Services - Strong Thursday Rally The stock market rallied strongly again Thursday as the S P 500 increased 0.78%, the Nasdaq increased 0.98%, and the Russell 2000 was up 0.43%. As you can see from the chart below, the Dow was the last of the 4 major indexes to reach a new record after
Leading Indicators - Record High The August Conference Board leading indicators were up 0.4% month over month which missed the consensus for 0.5% growth. The July Conference Board leading index was revised to show 0.7% growth instead of 0.6% growth. Even though the leading index is supposed to lead
Hourly Earnings Growth - Real Wage Growth Is Positive Again Inflation missed estimates as CPI fell from 2.9% year over year to 2.7%. Hourly earnings growth was 2.9% which was a cycle high. Therefore, it’s not surprising real wage growth switched from negative to positive in August. As you can see fr
Fund Managers - Bearish Emerging Markets, Bullish On America The Chinese economy seems in a tailspin. Fund managers surveyed by Merrill Lynch expect global growth to fall in the next 12 months. As you can see from the chart below, the September z-score on American stocks is the highest at 1.3. The r
Trade War Potentially Simmers Down It's shocking how the trade war situation worked out. The futures market looked weak on Monday night. It seemed inevitable that China would match the tariffs President Trump announced. However, that’s not what happened. China announced it would tax $60 billion wort
Consumer Sentiment Strong The University of Michigan consumer sentiment report showed consumer sentiment was 100.8 in the preliminary September reading. This beat the average estimate for 97 and last month’s reading of 96.2. It also beat the highest estimate which was 99. This report showed the most
Amazon - Tech Leads Market Lower The FANG stocks are down 15% on average from their 52 week highs. Even though I have been saying Twitter and Facebook are buys for the long term, it’s fair to say I have been wrong as both have continued to fall. Twitter fell 4.18% and Facebook fell 1.07%.
Industrial Production Growth Is Solid Since industrial production is a hard data report, it will settle the score on whether manufacturing growth was strong. I was unsure of the situation in August because many soft data reports conflicted with each other. The final tally is manufacturing was solid,
Chinese Goods - Latest Tariff News President Trump told his aides to go ahead with the tariff on $200 billion worth of goods. Let’s be clear, these are tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods, not $200 billion in tariffs like the news media sometimes reports in an effort to either be succinct or make
