Terrible Redbook Reading We have differing data on the latest trend in consumer spending. Earlier this week, Mastercard released spending data in its 8K filing. This updated data is paramount because the economy has changed so much in the past few weeks. Switched volume growth in the week ending May
Most Overbought Ever This is the most overbought market we’ve ever seen. That includes the January 2018 VIX shorting mania. It's because stocks have run up faster and there is more risk. In the beginning of 2018, there wasn’t much risk other than prices being too high. Now, we are potentially exitin
Perfect Headlines This market has seen an unbelievable combination of headlines. We had bankrupt stocks skyrocketing which led to the headline that Chesapeake stock rose triple digits which was followed by the headline that it filed for bankruptcy. Similarly, the S P 500 went positive on the year on
Moment Is Here Recently, many have recognized the possibility that this would be a historic moment in markets in terms of euphoric speculation. Mostly that was because of the unprecedented new retail trading accounts. In early to mid-May we thought there were some buys. Then, several investors start
Craziest Labor Report Ever This was the craziest labor report we have ever seen or will ever see. It beat expectations dramatically just like the ADP report. The BLS report was even better than the ADP report potentially because of an error. Essentially, jobs started coming back in May instead of Ju
Bad Jobless Claims Report Jobless claims report was terrible. That’s not what you want to see if you’re a bull because stocks have rallied so much on the premise a recovery is guaranteed. It’s far from guaranteed. Investors think that because the recession was man made (the shutdowns), it can be rev
Extremely Positive Sentiment Interestingly, the stock market fell very slightly on Thursday. But that has no impact on the extremely speculative run the market has been on for the past few weeks. It was very exciting to finally get the NAAIM exposure index because we knew it would get above 90 which
Extreme Euphoria Recently, it seemed like this had the potential to be a historic market where it gets extremely overbought like in January 2018. History has been made as the S P 500 has increased 37.7% in the past 50 days, making this the best 50 day period ever. Previous best period was in 2009 wh
Weirdly Impressive ADP Report May ADP report was terrible when using normal calculations, but spectacular compared to expectations. This may have been the biggest beat ever, because other than last month, no estimate would ever be this negative. Specifically, the April reading was revised from 20.23
Consumer Improving? Maybe Currently, the bottom of this cycle in Redbook same store sales growth was the lowest reading ever. It’s rarely negative. That makes sense because the consumer is usually growing and prices are usually increasing. In the week of May 30th, Redbook same store sales growth fel
