Equities - Stocks Ramp Further Equities - This has been an amazing summer for stocks. The party kept going on Wednesday. The S P 500 was up 0.57% and the Nasdaq was up 0.99%. Amazon stock was up 3.4% which gives it a market cap of $932 billion. Amazon announced it will be unveiling a free
Q2 GDP Growth - Revised Higher Q2 GDP Growth - Even though Q2 is long gone, we need to review the Q2 GDP revision because the data is now much more accurate. If you only look at the advanced reports, you’ll be missing out on what actually happened. I expected GDP growth to be revised
Stocks Overbought - Increase Slightly Stocks overbought - the S P 500 was up 3 basis points after giving back some of its early gains on Tuesday. The other indexes were also slightly positive. As you can see from the chart below, the S P 500’s 14 day relative strength index is at 69.49 which puts it
Consumer Confidence - Expectations Improve Consumer Confidence - the consumer surveys are quite volatile and divergent. The University of Michigan survey had its current conditions index fall 5.8% month over month. The latest Conference Board survey, which was released on Tuesday, was the best repor
Stocks Rally and Ramp On Monday Stocks Rally - Monday was an amazing day for equities as the S P 500 increased 0.77% and the Nasdaq increased 0.91%. The Russell 2000 was only up 0.16% because the catalyst for the ‘risk on’ trade was the trade deal between America and Mexico. Large caps are helped by
Global Trade Indicators Global Trade Indicators - The official trade reports take a few months to come out which is why I can only can say growth slowed from the beginning of the year to May. The official numbers are very important, but if you want up to the minute results, you can review the
GDP Estimates GDP Estimates - Since we discussed the durable goods report which goes right into GDP, it makes sense to review the latest estimates for Q3. The average of 12 estimates in the GDP rapid recap show growth will be 3.4%. The St. Louis Fed’s Q3 Nowcast fell from 3.69% to 3.64%. The Atlanta
Stocks Decline - Fall Slightly Stocks decline - The S P 500 is still in that awkward phase where it hit a record high on Tuesday, but hasn’t closed above its record high in January. I may be making too big of a deal of this because it could be purely fundamentals driving the market. However,
Manufacturing Growth Is Officially Slowing Manufacturing Growth - I have been looking for weak economic data points for a few months because the ECRI index has been shooting off warning signs. It was the only metric I saw which was starkly negative in Q2 which means it was tough to follow it. Howeve
