Manufacturing Improvement Coming? The equity market is very confident a cyclical recovery is coming. When poor economic data from Q4 comes out, it is discounted because investors are focused on 2020 which is expected to be the year where earnings growth recovers and the manufacturing sector rights i
Slight Decline, But Stocks Still Overbought S P 500 fell 0.27% on Tuesday, but let's discuss how overbought the market is. One modest decline doesn’t end that state. We need to see a decline of at least 5% for this market to become more normal. As I have said many times, this isn’t a bubble. For
Hiring Increases In November JOLTS In October, openings increased and hirings plummeted; in November it was the reverse. Headlines say this was a bad report, but I say it was ok. You can see the long term historical trends in hires, quits, openings, and layoffs discharges in the chart below. Hires s
Euphoria Keeps Going With the great housing starts and mediocre industrial production reports out, stocks rallied on Friday like they seem to do almost every day. This rally has been very impressive. As of Thursday, the 14 day RSI was at 74.59. Usually, when it’s over 70, it means stocks are ready f
December Was Hot It’s very important to understand that December was a relatively hot month because it impacts December’s economic data. Specifically, utilities production fell because of hot weather and housing boomed. It was particularly hotter than average in the South which is the nation’s large
Weak PPI Report Signals No Rate Cuts Just like headline CPI, headline PPI was up because of energy prices. It increased from 1.1% to 1.3% which met estimates. Commodities inflation has been low in the past few years as most inflation has been coming from wages. PPI excluding energy and food fell fro
Stocks Increase On Earnings Economic Data Stocks increased yet again on Thursday as this has been a great start to 2020 for the market. There were some earnings reports and a few economic reports that must have pleased investors. The retail sales report wasn’t bad or great. Maybe that’s enough to sa
Very Slight Increase On Wednesday Wednesday’s action was interesting. Mostly because the market’s morning gains were quickly wiped away in the afternoon. Especially as it looked like a real selloff was coming. However, the market rebounded in the last few minutes. Many were expecting the beginning o
Solid Redbook Growth, But Target Misses Estimates In the week of January 11th, Redbook same store sales growth was 5% which fell from 6.1%. That’s still strong growth though as the first half of the month looks solid. Based on the initial data points, it’s possible seasonally adjusted yearly retail
Slight Decline On Tuesday The stock market fell slightly on Tuesday, although, small caps rallied. It’s ironic that small caps rallied and outperformed on the same day the NFIB small business index fell. To be clear, small firms in the NFIB survey aren’t large enough to be in the Russell 2000. And t
