Slowing Economy - Economic Growth Is Slowing Before getting into the economic data from last week about the Slowing Economy, let’s get a baseline understanding of how the economy is doing. In June, the ECRI coincident index’s growth rate was 1.6%. It bottomed at about 1% in 2016. Real yearly GDP gro
Worst Week - Another Down Day For Stocks Suddenly in the Worst Week of 2019, stocks are in a losing streak as the S P 500 fell again on Friday. It’s now down 5 straight days since it reached its record high on July 26th. It is down 3.1% in this losing streak. This decline is
Pending Home Sales - The Biggest Week Of 2019 Before getting into Pending Home Sales let's review the markets. The week to start the month of August was probably the most jam-packed week of the year. Especially in terms of news events and action in markets. We’ve had earnings reports, a new tariff a
Tariff Announcement - Volatile Thursday With a major Tariff Announcement - Thursday was one of the most interesting days of 2019 for markets. Stocks rallied on bad economic news and then sold off. Mostly because President Trump issued a new tariff on China. Right after the Fed was hawkish, the marke
Optimistic Consumers - Very Large Consumer Confidence Improvement June is showing a spike in Optimistic Consumers. The June Conference Board consumer confidence index was revised higher from 121.5 to 124.3. Which makes sense considering how solid the retail sales report was. Even more impressively,
Yield Curve Flattens - Hawkish Fed Causes Stocks To Fall Yield Curve Flattens - as Fed’s hawkish cut caused the stock market to decline moderately on Wednesday. Which is exactly what you’d expect. The market was pricing in 2 more cuts by the end of the year. S P 500 fell 1.09%, Nasdaq fell 1.19%, an
Hawkish Cut A Hawkish Cut ended up surprising many investors. Fed’s rate cut on Wednesday included hawkish guidance. Even though the Fed stated it would end the unwind of its balance sheet in August. That's 2 months earlier than it previously stated. End of the unwind isn’t nearly as important as ra
Apple Rallies - Small Caps Outperform Sharply On the day before the Fed’s rate decision and the trading session before Apple Rallies reported, stocks mostly fell. Although small caps rallied. On Tuesday S P 500 fell 0.26%, Nasdaq fell 0.24%, and Russell 2000 rose 1.06%. VIX increased 8.65%. It’s int
Core Inflation Low - Beyond Meat Clarification Before getting into Core Inflation Low - I want to quickly clarify the facts on the Beyond Meat secondary. New capital raised represents 0.4% of equity. Decline the secondary caused the stock to have could be good news. It could get rid of the post-IPO
