Avoid at all costs: If you’re bullish on the markets you are probably only digesting bullish data points. If you are bearish on the markets you are probably only digesting bearish data points. Seek balance, not bias! ~Seth Golden If you would like to watch this week’s State of the Market video, please click the…...
With the back-stopping of bank deposits by the Fed/FDIC, many equity investors are asking if this is another form of QE and therefore “risk on.” We argue it’s not, and instead represents the beginning of the end of the bear market as falling credit availability squeezes growth out of the economy. This Is Not QE…Once…...
There is never a time to not be honest with oneself as an investor/trader. We should always remain objective and flexible with respect to incoming data, be it fundamental, technical or quantitative data. I can’t suggest there has been much, if any, shift in the fundamental data year-to-date, but the technical data is becoming increasingly…...
The non-seasonally adjusted headline CPI eased for an eighth consecutive month to 6.0% in February (Chart 1). The seasonally adjusted month-over-month headline figure came in at 0.4%, down a tick from January’s reading. Both headline figures matched their consensus estimates. The Core CPI came in at 5.5%, tallying its fifth consecutive monthly decline since peaking…...
By Ian Shephardson of Pantheon Macro Economic Slowing Wage Gains will Give the Fed Room to Pause, but not Yet The 265K increase in February private payrolls supports our view that January’s 386K spike—revised down from the initial 443K estimate—was an aberration, driven by much less cold January weather than usual. The lack of disruptive…...
I don’t know that there were many investors/traders who anticipated the route in markets this past week, but there are some seasonal factors at play suggesting that March’s price action is on-trend, historically. Looking at only the past 20 years showed that stocks tended to bottom in March. This is likely due to major bear…...
Critical Technical Support Holds This week’s note will be shorter than normal given the Tech playbook note we also published today ahead of our conference this week in San Francisco. Given our comments last week around the technicals, we thought it was important to provide a brief update after Friday’s price action. In short, equity…...
Slower spending growth in February The growth in Bank of America credit and debit card spending per household decelerated in February to 2.7% YoY, from 5.1% YoY in January. On the month seasonally-adjusted (SA) total card spending rose 0.7% MoM, compared to the strong 1.3% MoM in January. As discussed in last month’s Consumer Checkpoint,…...
To achieve long-term success over many financial market and economic cycles, observing a few rules is not enough. Too many things change too quickly in the investment world for that to succeed. It is necessary instead to understand the rationale behind the rules in order to appreciate why they work when they do and don’t…...
by Ian Shephardson of Pantheon MacroEconomic ADP and JOLTS are Unreliable Guides to Labor Market Trends The record of the all-new ADP methodology in predicting the first estimate of the monthly official private payroll numbers is unimpressive, as our first chart shows. ADP’s 106K increase in January completely failed to spot the 443K surge in…...
