Record Russell 2000 Earnings Expected

Stocks Barely Move Monday was another record setting day for stocks. The Dow had its 5th record close and the S&P 500 stayed above 2,500 closing up 0.15%. The new trend is that the Russell 2000 is outperforming the large cap indexes. The Russell 2000 was up 0.65% on Monday and is up 6.2% in the…

Hurricane Harvey Retail Sales Impact Was Short

More information is coming out on how hurricane Harvey effected the economy. The chart below shows how retail sales ex-autos were affected by the storm. As you can see, there was a boost in sales in Texas prior to the storm because people were buying supplies such as necessities as well as storm protection gear.…

Fed Unwind To Be Announced On September 20th

Some Final Unwind Thoughts On Thursday, the Fed’s balance sheet was released like it is every week. As you can see in the chart below, the balance sheet increased $17.7 billion which was the biggest spike since December 2016. That’s weird timing because the Fed is expected to finalize the unwind announcement next week. This…

New Record High As Nothing Can Keep A Lid On Stocks

Today was an unusual day in the stock market because the S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq all hit a record high even though there was very bad economic data released. The Dow had its best week since December. Even the Russell 2000 has been getting in on the party. The Russell 2000 is up 5.48%…

Hurricane Harvey & Irma Disrupt The Labor Market

The Citi Surprise index has rallied back to near 0. Keep this in mind when you hear bears claiming the Citi Surprise index is doing badly. It’s a terrible economic indicator as the economy was strong in the first half, especially in Q2 where GDP growth was 3.0%. As you can see from the second…

Small Businesses Remain Hugely Optimistic

The Chinese economy has been improving this year, but unfortunately that trend reversed course in the latest batch of data. The chart below breaks down the three data points which were released Wednesday night NYC time. Retail sales were up 10.1% year over year. Obviously, that’s great growth by American standards. However, it missed expectations…

Credit Growth Stalls: Bad Sign For 2018 Economy?

The rampage in stocks knows no bounds. The Nasdaq, Dow, and S&P 500 all hit record highs on Wednesday even though Apple was down on the day. As you can see from the chart below, the total returns in this bull market just passed the 1950s rally. This is now the third largest rally in…

Is Bitcoin Under-Owned?

Bitcoin Under-Owned? As we discussed in the last article, institutional investors said Bitcoin was the most overvalued security in the world. Since my last post, the price of Bitcoin has fallen below $4,000. Some of the speculation has left the market. The chart below gives you an additional way to look at Bitcoin. It compares…

Low Paid Workers Getting A Raise

A previous article mentioned how low skilled workers are seeing more income growth than middle skilled and highly skilled workers. The chart below shows this trend in a different light. As you can see, those making less than $17 an hour are seeing more income growth than those making over $25 an hour. Part of…

Q3 Earnings Estimates Fall As Stocks Soar

Chinese Economy Driving U.S. Market FactSet released its updated aggregate quarterly earnings report. They broke down firms with a large amount of Asian exposure in the chart below. As you can see, the firms with over 40% of sales in Asia outperformed those who only have 20% exposure to Asia. The group with 20% of…