Labor Market Keeps Improving - Ignore The Noise
Jobless Claims Fall Jobless claims report from the week of August 29th had a few nuances that make looking at the seasonally adjusted headline reading or any other headlines misleading. Seasonally adjusted claims fell from 1.011 million to 881,000 which was below the consensus of 958,000 and the lowest estimate which was 910,000. These estimates made…
Extreme Mania - September 2020 Peak
Mania Knows No Bounds This stock market can’t go down. It only goes up. S&P 500 increased 1.5% on Wednesday even though it came into the day showing extreme greed on the CNN fear and greed index. S&P 500 is now up 10.84% on the year. It has officially been a better than average year…
ADP Report Misses Estimates: Stock Market Doesn’t Care At All
Disappointing ADP Report The private sector payrolls report from August was disappointing as there were 428,000 jobs added instead of 900,000. However, this is still more jobs created in a month than usual in recoveries. Unemployment rate is about to fall below the peak in the last recession. We can start to have a normal…
This Is Destined To Be the Biggest Bubble Ever
Extreme Market Continues Did you expect the bubble to stop just because August ended? Of course, it didn’t end. This bubble is destined to be the greatest ever. Nasdaq increased 1.39% which means it’s now up 33.1% year to date and 50% in the past year. S&P 500 was up 75 basis points. This was…
Improved Consumer Spending & Manufacturing PMI
Same Store Sales Ramp The consumer did much better in August despite the elimination of the $600 in weekly unemployment benefits. That’s likely because of the improvement from people working and that more people have jobs. Redbook same store sales growth was 4.6% in the week of August 29th which rose from 0.6%. This is great…
Tesla and Apple Bubbles Reach Unbelievable Heights
3 Stock Market Investors keep expecting this trend where a few stocks control the market to end, but it keeps going. This is one of the greatest bubbles in history, so we shouldn’t be surprised. Near the end of bubbles, we see the craziest action. That occurred on Monday as most stocks fell, but Tesla…
Unemployment Benefits Are Being Paid - Mini Stimulus
Impact Of Lower Benefits Two aspects of consumer spending are worth following. Firstly, we can look at the impact of the elimination of the $600 in weekly unemployment benefits and then the $300-$400 in weekly benefits that are gradually being brought back state by state. There wasn’t a massive decline in spending in the beginning…
Fifth Straight Up Week and Month
Very Rare Day Friday was a rare day because large cap tech and small cap value were highly correlated. This is rare for this summer, but normal in most markets other than the late 1990s and early 2000 before the tech crash. Cloud index was up 1.2%, small cap value stocks were up 0.8%. Nasdaq…
Consumer Sentiment Stays Low - But Consumer Still Spending
How Is The Consumer Doing? Data suggests that August was a mixed bag for the consumer despite the 6 year low in confidence. Frankly, a mixed bag is good when you consider most unemployed people lost $600 per week. That’s $2,400 on the month. Some people got their jobs back this month as continued claims…
This Has Been The Best Month Ever
Another New Record: Stocks Can Never Fall Again S&P 500 rose 17 basis points on Thursday. Tech stocks fell and the banks rallied. Like No matter which stocks do well on the day, the index almost always goes up. The Nasdaq was down 34 basis points and the Russell 2000 was up 28 basis points.…