Consumer Sentiment - Highest Since March

Consumer Sentiment Strong The University of Michigan consumer sentiment report showed consumer sentiment was 100.8 in the preliminary September reading. This beat the average estimate for 97 and last month’s reading of 96.2. It also beat the highest estimate which was 99. This report showed the most optimism since March 2018. Other than that, this…

Amazon To Sell 8 New Alexa Powered Products

Amazon - Tech Leads Market Lower The FANG stocks are down 15% on average from their 52 week highs. Even though I have been saying Twitter and Facebook are buys for the long term, it’s fair to say I have been wrong as both have continued to fall. Twitter fell 4.18% and Facebook fell 1.07%.…

Industrial Production Growth Solid | Import & Export Prices Decline

Industrial Production Growth Is Solid Since industrial production is a hard data report, it will settle the score on whether manufacturing growth was strong. I was unsure of the situation in August because many soft data reports conflicted with each other. The final tally is manufacturing was solid, but not as amazing as the ISM…

Chinese Goods - President Trump Threatens To Tariff $200 Billion Worth

Chinese Goods - Latest Tariff News President Trump told his aides to go ahead with the tariff on $200 billion worth of goods. Let’s be clear, these are tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods, not $200 billion in tariffs like the news media sometimes reports in an effort to either be succinct or make…

Apple Tech Leads Sector & Overall Market Higher

Apple Tech - Stocks Rally Again On Thursday Apple Tech - It's wrong to suggest the correction isn’t almost over as the market has been up every day this week, following a week where it was down every day. The S&P 500 is less than 10 points away from its all time closing high. It’s…

Producer Price Inflation - Very Benign

Producer Price Inflation - PPI Final Demand Producer Price Inflation - The breakeven inflation rate and treasury yields have increased every year over year since hourly earnings growth hit a cycle high. The August PPI report missed expectations widely, signaling inflation isn’t a threat at all. As you can see in the chart below, month over…

China Trade Negotiations | Apple Releases New iPhones

China Trade Negotiations - America Tries To Diffuse The Trade Skirmish With China As I mentioned, America is trying to end the trade dispute with China. There was a report from the Wall Street Journal that America is trying to arrange talks with China before President Trump follows through with the tariff on $200 billion…

Record High Small Business Sentiment

Small Business - Record High Optimism The NFIB small business optimism index was up from 107.9 in July to 108.8 in August. It beat the consensus for 108.1 and the high end of the range which was 108.5. This was the highest reading in the 45 year history of the report. You can see in…

Hurricane Florence Takes Aim On North Carolina: Insurers Could Lose $20 Billion

Hurricane Florence To Impact The Economy Hurricane Florence - The biggest news on Tuesday was the potential for hurricane Florence to deliver catastrophic damage to North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia later this week. All those states along with Maryland and Washington D.C. are under states of emergency. You can see the graphic below shows…

Used Vehicle Prices Up 6.4% Year Over Year

Used Vehicle Prices Up Used vehicle prices can be used to measure the strength of the economy. As you can see from the chart below, the Manheim used vehicle index cratered in late 2008 and was stable from late 2011 to early 2017. The results in the past few quarters have been great. In August,…