Neutral September Fed Minutes September Fed Minutes weren’t that dovish. Especially considering the Fed cut rates at that meeting. And the Fed funds futures market is pricing in another cut in October. Despite the mixed signals given from the Minutes, stocks rallied. Fed expressed worries about the
Stocks Fall On Trade Worries Stocks fell on Tuesday because of the negative news surrounding trade talks between America and China. News events on Tuesday have made the lead up to the trade negotiations almost as bad as it can be. Optimism about a deal has waned considerably. Investors, including my
Another Good Redbook Reading We are currently in a state of uncertainty in terms of consumer spending because retail sales growth is improving, while consumption growth is falling. Their real growth rates were nearly the same in August, but they were heading in the opposite directions. PCE is wider
Stocks Fall Slightly On Trade Worries The stock market fell slightly on Monday because of fears progress on a US China trade deal won’t be made in the negotiations later this week. Latest report is Vice Premier Liu He told dignitaries he won’t offer commitments on reforming Chinese industrial policy
Consumer Credit Falls In August, the increase in consumer credit outstanding fell from $23 billion to $17.9 billion which beat estimates for $17 billion. Decline in credit growth was caused by revolving credit which was up $9.4 billion in July and down $2 billion in August. A slight decline in revol
Goldilocks Sends Stocks Higher The stock market soared on the Goldilocks jobs report on Friday. Investors were curious how the market would react to weakness. Apparently, the market is fine with slowing payrolls growth. It’s not necessarily a new trend, but weakness in manufacturing wasn’t a new tre
Another Bad ISM Report September ISM services report was like the manufacturing PMI. It fell and both reports were paired with an improving, but still weak Markit PMI. A key differences between the services and manufacturing PMIs from ISM are that the services PMI was above 50 and that the services
Big Reversal As October Rate Cut Locked In The stock market was down sharply Thursday morning because of the weak ISM non-manufacturing report, but then it rebounded throughout the day as the odds of a rate cut this month increased. The odds of 2 cuts by the end of the year also increased. I was
Strong MBA Applications Growth The only way you can say the housing market signaled a recession is if you say the late 2018-early 2019 weakness was the warning sign. However, that’s dubious because housing is strong now. If the consumer really was in the tank, we wouldn’t see cycle highs in new and
Terrible Start To Q4 Q4 has started with back to back sharply down days. Many investors predicted the VIX would touch 20 this month and it hit 20 on the 2nd trading day. VIX was up 2 points to 20.56 because the S P 500 fell 1.79%. The S P 500 has never started a Q4 down at
