Review Of The “Unimportant” Fed Meeting This wasn’t a hotly anticipated Fed meeting because the Fed wasn’t expected to hike or cut rates, the decision was widely priced in, and the Fed shouldn’t act at the next meeting either. There was very little uncertainty about the January meeting as well (few
Another Slight Decline For Stocks Investors have one thing on their mind and it’s not the Fed meeting on Wednesday where there will be no change in rates. Every day that goes by without hard evidence that there will be a trade deal means we are one step closer to tariffs being raised on the
December Redbook Shows Continued Strength We’ve already had a strong Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but that’s not the entire holiday shopping season. The rest of December is also important. Last year, we saw a huge dip in retail sales growth in December. There was an extra week for shopping. But co
Slight Pullback On Monday The stock market fell modestly on Monday after its big rally on Friday which was caused by the great jobs report. And, the market was pushed lower by Apple’s 1.4% decline. S P 500 fell 0.32%. Apple is one of the trade sensitive stocks. Obviously, there are other news events
Education And Healthcare Drive Job Creation November jobs report showed 266,000 jobs created which was the most since January. 41,000 of the manufacturing jobs created were related to the ending of the GM strike. That means there really were 13,000 manufacturing jobs created which isn’t terrible. IS
Big Rally In Stocks After Strong Jobs Report Many investors thought the November jobs report would show less jobs created than it did. And many also thought a very strong jobs report with high wage growth could be problematic for the stock market. I will review the headline numbers from this labor r
Services PMI Déjà vu (ISM Falls) November ISM services PMI fell and the Markit PMI rose. This is just like the manufacturing sector. One difference is the ISM manufacturing PMI was below the Markit reading. This time the ISM reading was higher (the gap just narrowed). It's more normal as the Markit
2 Day Winning Streak Just like last month, the stock market is following a losing streak with a winning streak as it is up for 2 straight days. The calendar effect might be helping stocks as December is usually a great month. Interestingly, following years with gains of 20% or more, the average annu
Recession Odds Decline According to the Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti business conditions index, odds of a recession have declined recently. However, the most recent data in this report is always the least reliable. It gets updated after the fact when new data comes out. For example, the November industrial
Stocks Recover Some Of Their Recent Losses: Trade Deal Back On? In a repeat of Monday’s manufacturing PMI data, the Markit services PMI improved and the ISM non-manufacturing PMI fell. Motor vehicle sales report rose after a weak October reading. ADP report was weak which only matters if it correctl
