Motor Vehicle Sales Weaken December motor vehicle sales report put a dent in any thesis that December retail sales growth will be strong. Motor vehicles and parts category has the highest weighting in the retail sales report. I still think non-store retail sales growth will accelerate. However, moto
Stocks Recover From Morning Selloff (Fed Futures Correction) S P 500 rallied steadily after opening the trading session lower. In this bull market, most of the gains have occurred late into the night in the after-hours session. That makes this rally unusual. S P 500 increased 0.35% on the day. From
Home Price Growth Bottoming Home price indexes are always delayed a couple months. But home price growth is important, so let's review them. Based on recent reports, it seems like yearly home price growth is bottoming. It is being helped by low rates and easy comps. However, I don’t think home price
Stocks Fall As Expected It’s not surprising stocks fell on Friday. The market was very overbought and the airstrike that killed Soleimani gave investors an excuse to take profits. Also, the Fed Minutes were hawkish. Plus, the ISM manufacturing PMI missed estimates. If you believe the ISM numbers, th
Low Wage Workers Getting Another Raise A big negative for workers in 2020 will be the rise in headline inflation because of the increase in oil prices. In the next few months, comps will get tougher, but oil prices will likely rise this year. Fundamentals of the labor market look great for middle an
Market Starts The Year Extremely Overbought On Thursday, the market continued where it left off in 2019 by rallying sharply. Markets might face trouble on Friday. For now, let’s review the action that has occurred already. S P 500 rose 0.84% on Thursday. Predictions of renewed volatility this winter
Apple Larger Than Energy Despite the huge growth in American oil production to a record high due to advancements in fracking, the energy sector’s weighting in the S P 500 is the lowest since at least 1990. Part of that weakness might be because some view this production as unsustainable due to high
Monday’s Decline The stock market has been on a rampage in the past few weeks. It has been due for a correction. Personally, I expect the start of 2020 to be volatile and see 3% to 5% gains in 2020. If you buy at the correction trough, it will be like a normal year of
Trade Balance Helps GDP Estimates Let's first discuss the latest report on trade which boosted GDP estimates. Then, GDP Nowcasts and ECRI leading index which don’t include this latest data yet. Either way you look at it, GDP growth should be very close to 2%. That’s what I predicted back in November
Stocks Stay Overbought Stocks were on their way to another solid day, but they fell in the afternoon; the rally in the last few minutes of the session didn’t cancel out all the losses. Alas, the Nasdaq wasn’t able to hit a record high for 11 straight days. That would have been the longest such
