Daily Chartbook #13

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

1. EIA errors. Remember that chart yesterday about fewer drivers on the road now than during the height of the lockdowns? Take it with a grain of salt as the Energy Information Administration is not very accurate in their estimates. Here’s a good short thread explaining why.

2. WTI Crude. US oil prices have fallen below $90 a barrel for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine in February

3. Mortgages. Rates for 30-year fixed mortgages have fallen below 5% after their sharpest 2-week decline since 2008.

4. Snarls subside. The NY Fed’s Global Supply Chain Pressure Index fell in July to its lowest level since February 2021.

5. Delivery times. An important gauge for the supply chain is delivery times. These components have fallen in both the ISM Manufacturing and Servicing Indexes.

6. More supply chain relief. Available shipping capacity is nearing pre-pandemic levels.

7. This should bring down costs. Shippers see prices continuing to fall.

8. Inflation surprise ahead? Citi’s Inflation Surprise Index has curled up.

9. Pain. The Misery Index (self-explanatory) is at recessionary levels.

10. Balance of Trade. The US trade deficit narrowed to a 6-month low in June with exports up 1.7% and imports down 0.3%

11. Labor market. Initial jobless claims continues its steady march upward. The 4-week average is now 50% higher than its low.

12. Yield curve. The 2- and 10-year and deeply inverted. The curve is at its widest inversion since September 2000.

13. Hedge funds (I). Hedge funds are on track for “one of their worst years going back three decades”.

14. Hedge funds (II). They very under-positioned to US equtities.

15. Hedge funds (III). And net leverage is very low.

16. Checking in on the dumb money. Can you guess what happens when Dumb Money Confidence, “an aggregate of indicators that follow ‘dumb money’ trades in the opening minutes of a session”, gets too high?

17. Retail chasing. “Signs that retail is chasing this rally as well. Apparently in the first hour of the day call volume outpaced put volume by levels we had not seen since the retail craze during the day.”

18. “New bull market”. It’s data cherry-picking, but here’s the S&P overlaid with the number of stories mentioning a “new bull market”.

19. Insider action. Corporate insiders are selling shares at 2.3x the rate they are buying. That’s the highest since the selloff began in January

20. Forward P/E vs. Forward EPS. The rally off the mid-June lows has been fueled by forward P/E and not by forward earnings, which have been declining.

21. Energy sector divergence. The forward P/Es for the energy sector have dropped 25% while forward EPS have jumped 78%.

22. 2022 MVP. Energy is carrying the S&P 500 this year. Removing this sector from the equation and earnings outlook drops from 9.3% to 3.1%.

23. Global P/Es. Yesterday we looked at P/E for world stocks. Here’s a breakdown for the US, Japan, China, and Europe including their 25-year ranges and averages.

24. Large M&A is doing just fine. There were 23 worldwide M&A deals worth $10 billion or more in the first half of 2022. The combined deals had a total value of $560.59 billion.

25. ARKK vs Dotcom Nasdaq. The analogy is still holding up pretty well.

26. A (virtual) housing bubble. And finally, when they say that real estate is a good hedge against inflation—they don’t mean virtual real estate. The average price of virtual land in the metaverse has been plummeting.