Yesterday’s attempt to push stocks higher failed, but today’s hammering of volatility appears to be working as stocks are effortlessly moving higher. The financial media reported this morning that long-term Treasury yields were headed higher due to today’s upcoming three-year Treasury auction. I don’t think so… There is a record short position on long-term bonds, … Read more
U.S. stocks opened higher on news that House Republicans were proposing a second round of tax cuts to make lower individual rates permanent, to eliminate the maximum age for some retirement account contributions and to allow new businesses to write-off more of their startup costs. Only tech stocks and small-caps could hold their early gains … Read more
Corporations have pledged to repurchase $1 trillion of their own stock back this year, which is creating an opportunity for corporate executives to sell their shares to an indiscriminate buyer. In August, corporate executives cashed out over $10 billion of their own stock, the largest amount since November 2016. Year-to-date, corporations have purchased $850 billion … Read more
The big news was the August Nonfarm Payroll report which showed a strong headline number of +201k jobs created last month. June and July’s payroll numbers were revised down -50k, which took some shine off this month’s report. The birth-death model showed 104k jobs in August were to newly self-employed, which is a statistical number … Read more
The growth rate of the M2 Money Supply ticked up slightly to 4.02%, which has been decelerating since 2016. Be aware, historically when then the growth rate of the money supply falls below 3.70%, our economy experiences recessions and depressions. The recent money supply data has yet to take into account last weeks balance sheet … Read more
Emerging Markets have officially entered a Bear market as the largest Emerging Markets ETF (symbol: EEM) is now down 20% from its peak earlier this year. Emerging markets are a proxy for market liquidity, so as emerging markets stocks fall, so should U.S. stocks. Factory orders slid 0.8% month-over-month, which isn’t a big concern as … Read more
After the NYSE “glitch” was resolved, buyers came back into the market to push prices back up. By the end of the trading day, all major indices were in the red except the DJIA. Treasury yields were flat on the day as sellers cannot seem to push yields much higher. I remain impressed that the … Read more
U.S. equities started the day down and continued to move down as social media companies are testifying to Congress today. But the dip in the stock market was largely blamed on a technical issue at the New York Stock Exchange, that once resolved saw buyers coming back into the market. In overnight trading, both Asian … Read more
While the stock market seems to be immune to the Fed’s Quantitative Tightening, foreign stock markets are feeling the dollar liquidity drain. After rising into the holiday weekend, U.S. equities were down slightly, but the bigger news was in the bond market. Speculators who have been betting against the Treasury market since February are losing … Read more