Boat Buying For Personal Use Is At A Cycle High

Do Economic Indicators Work? Game theorists believe the moment an economic indicator becomes an indicator, it ceases to be valuable because it can be manipulated for profit or influence. It’s cynical to believe every single indicator is manipulated, but some manipulation occurs and only looking at the same stats everyone else looks at isn’t going…

Every Sector Has Seen Multiple Compression In 2018

Does The Stock Market Matter To Trade? On Monday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross claimed there was no level the stock market could fall to that would cause the President to change his trade policy. It’s not surprising to hear the White House claim this because if it stated there was a level the market could…

Weak Consumer Spending Pushed Down GDP Estimates

Trade Tensions Cause Futures To Sell Off Recently there has been a trend where stocks open higher and then fall throughout the day because of trade tensions. The key factor in determining when the selloff occurs is when the news comes out. If it comes out the night before, the futures decline, then the market…

Stocks End 1H 2018 With A Dud

Stocks End A Weak First Half The stock market had a good Friday until the hour before the close where it gave back almost all the day’s gains. The S&P 500 was up only 8 basis points to close out the quarter. The headlines mid-day stated that Nike was pushing the entire market up, but…

Banks Stress Tested: Most Pass

Stocks Rebound Modestly After a terrible week and a bad run for the bank stocks, the market finally rallied on Thursday. I expected this rally since the CNN Fear and Greed index showed the market was oversold. Interestingly, the Dow’s decision to replace GE with Walgreens was a big mistake in the near term. GE…

Biggest Structural Risks Facing The Market

Structural Risk: Trade Wars In a previous article, I reviewed the cyclical risks in the Venn diagram below. Now let’s review the middle risks which are both structural and cyclical. The trade wars are considered cyclical because Trump is going to be President for another 2.5 years or 6.5 years. Without him, these tariffs wouldn’t…

The Financials Have Been Down A Record 13 Straight Days

Stocks Open Up On Trump Statement The stock market rose at the beginning of Wednesday’s trading session because the statement about technology investment wasn’t as draconian as expected. The President released plans to strengthen use of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. There was no specific 25% Chinese ownership block like mentioned in…

Atlanta Fed Nowcast Shows 4.5% Q2 GDP Growth

Weak Durable Goods Report Hurt By Auto Supplier Fire After the weak manufacturing component of industrial production, we are now seeing weakness in industrial production because of an auto supplier fire. On May 2nd, there was an explosion at an auto supplier called Meridian Magnesium Products of America in Eaton Rapids. This plant has annual…

Stocks Remain Concerned About The Trade Skirmishes

Moderate Rally As Trade Worries Linger The S&P 500 was up 0.22% as the stock market continued its upward momentum from late in the trading session on Monday when Peter Navarro calmed the markets. The Nasdaq and Russell 2000 regained even more of their losses as they were up 0.39% and 0.66% respectively. Press secretary…

Equity Volatility Has Been Near Average In 2018

Is The Market Volatile? Your fear of the current market action is dependent on your experience. If you don’t have a lot of experience in the market, you may be afraid, but this has been a normal year. I made the prediction late last year that this year would be more volatile than 2017. That…