Daily Chartbook #119

Welcome back to Daily Chartbook: macro market charts, data, and insights pulled from various sources around the Internet by a solo retail investor.

1. Global outlook. "The threat of recession, the cost-of-living crisis and mounting debt distress will dominate the global economy in the next two years, according to a survey by the World Economic Forum".

2. Supply chain metrics. "Supply chain metrics continue to soften at rapid rate ... average of group listed in chart has z-score of -0.82, with used vehicles seeing largest drop".

3. Search trends. Articles referring to a "soft landing" have spiked again.

4. Jobless claims. "Initial jobless claims started off 2023 where they left off in 2022, with another good print. Initial claims declined -1,000 to 205,000, while the more important 4 week average declined -1,750 to 212,500. Continuing claims also declined, down -63,000 to 1.634 million".

5. CPI (I). "December headline CPI -0.1% m/m (largest monthly drop since early 2020) vs. -0.1% est. & +0.1% prior … core CPI +0.3% vs. +0.3% est. & +0.2% prior".

6. CPI (II). MoM change in headline CPI with topline contributions.

7. CPI (III). MoM change in headline CPI with top 5 individual contributors.

8. CPI (IV). MoM change in core CPI with topline contributors.

9. CPI (V). "The most important inflation number currently is core-CPI ex-shelter.  This was negative month-to-month for the third consecutive month and is now only up 4.4% YoY".

10. CPI (VI). "In m/m terms, owners’ equivalent rent (OER) saw gains re-accelerate in December, +0.8% m/m vs. +0.7% prior".

11. CPI (VII). "While Goods inflation tumbled to its lowest since Feb 2021, Services inflation soared to its highest since Sept 1982".

12. CPI (VIII). YoY change in Services CPI with topline contributions.

13. CPI (IX). Three-month annualized rates for core goods (-4.8%), shelter (+9.2%), and services ex shelter (+1.2%),

14. Wage growth (I). "The Atlanta Fed's tracker shows that median wage growth in December (using a three-month moving average) ticked down to 6.1% from 6.4% in November". Job switchers and stayers saw wage growth fall from 8.1% to 7.7% and from 5.5% to 5.3%, respectively.

15. Wage growth (II). "US wage growth has failed to keep pace with rising consumer prices for a record 21 consecutive months".

16. Global inflation. "An update on the evolution of global inflation by country/region".

17. Post-bear market. "If you're not too busy gossiping about a half ass attempt at gauging inflation, maybe take some time to see how each sector is performing so far during this bull market".

18. Industries vs. inflation. “Median monthly annualized industry returns vs. the market in periods of high and falling inflation (data since 1962)”.

19. Commodity prices. "Energy, agriculture, and base metals indexes have fallen into negative return territory year/year ... commodity prices have softened materially and taken a breather after surge earlier last year".

20. Drawdown stocks. "Fewest S&P 500 stocks in 20% drawdowns since May".

21. S&P breadth. "200-day breadth is sitting at one of the highest levels in over a year, with around 61% of the index trading above its longer-term trend. It's pretty unusual for $SPX to still be this drawn down, given this level of breadth".

22. Risk appetite. US equity investor risk appetite and expectations for near-term market performance remain negative.

23. Speculative buyers gone. "At various points in 2021, over 50% of stocks in the S&P top 100 had inverted call skew (a sign of extreme bullish sentiment). Now that number is at 0%".

24. Nasdaq corporate insiders. "These corporate insiders are at the peak of seller exhaustion".

25. NAAIM. Active investment manager "exposure up a smidge to 45".

26. Smart money positioning. "Institutional positioning proxied by SPX net positioning is up from recent lows, but remains well off "elevated" levels".

27. Retail gives up. "Barclays also shows that small lot trading size has crashed, indicating that the retail "punter" has given up trying to trade single stock options".

28. Retail positioning. "Traders unloaded $3.1B equities which ranks in the top 3 biggest selling events in history".

29. Staples & low volatility. "If you adjust for the irresponsible amount of exposure to growth stocks in the S&P500, you’ll find that Consumer Staples and Low Volatility stocks are not outperforming at all. It’s quite the opposite of that actually".

30. Value vs Growth. And finally, “value stocks are now trading at similar valuations to Growth ones”.

Thanks for reading!