Daily Chartbook #146

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

1. Mortgage demand. The purchase index "slumped more than 18% — the biggest drop since 2015 — to 147.1" and is now at its lowest level since 1995.

2. G4 composite PMI. "Business activity rose across the four largest developed world economies (the "G4") in February, reviving after seven months of continual decline".

3. Jobs data. "Data just released by the BLS (QCEW) shows the US adding more than 1.3M jobs in the 3rd Quater of 2022 on a not-seasonally-adjusted basis. That's much stronger than current official Q3 CES estimates and suggests the Q2 QCEW weakness was a fluke".

4. Real wages. "Morgan Stanley sees real wages turning positive next quarter".

5. Real disposable income. "All income quintiles should show positive real disposable income growth in 2023".

6. Q1 GDP estimates (I). Capital Spectator’s “early median estimate for US GDP in Q1 skews slightly negative”.

7. Q1 GDP estimates (II). Goldman boosted its “Q1 GDP tracking estimate by 0.6pp to +1.4%”.

8. PCE forecast. "Forecasters boosted their projections for the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge [PCE] for every quarter through the first half of next year".

9. Inflation talk. "Inflation" word count for FOMC minutes including today.

10. Fixed income reversal. "Global bonds could erase all of their 2023 gains at this rate, signifying that concerns over inflation and central bank reactions are taking center stage again".

11. Bond rotation. Investors are ditching riskier ETFs ($JNK, $LQD) for safer bets ($SPTS, $TLT).

12. ETF flows. "Active ETFs have captured 36% of net flows into ETF so far in 2023, a big jump from 14% last year, which was a record".

13. Retail optimism. "Dumb money has reached extreme highs in this market rally".

14. Hedge fund positioning. "HFs got ‘longer’ in January by covering index-level shorts … not by adding to single-name longs = they remain underinvested on the long side".

15. CTAs & equities. "CTAs now have over $200B worth of exposure that they're likely to sell into recent weakness as momentum fades".

16. Short interest. "Short interest for the typical stock remains very low".

17. Put hate. "We saw max put hate at recent market highs".

18. Stock correlations (I). "The MSCI All Country World Index’s average pairwise correlation reading in January touched the lowest since October 2021, while the variance in one-month returns spiked to an above-average level, off pandemic".

19. Stock correlations (II). S&P 500 realized 3-month average stock correlation is falling.

20. Megacaps vs. SPX (I). "EV/sales multiple for mega-cap tech is still above historical average".

21. Megacaps vs. SPX (II). "2010-2021 annualized sales of 18% vs. 5%; forecast 2021-24 gap is 8% vs. 7%".

22. IPO struggle. "The IPO class of 2020/21 has struggled since going public".

23. US M&A. Merger & acquisition activity increased by 5.8% in January while aggregate deal values fell by 28.8%.

24. Sales growth. "The latest earnings season revealed that sales were still expanding in a way that had not been seen in the three decades prior to the post-Covid rebound".

25. Profit trends. "With exceptionally high profits versus trend, coupled with companies benefiting far more from higher nominal sales growth than Europe, for the Federal Reserve to pivot or indeed be successful, US corporates need to be far less profitable".

26. Profit margins. Goldman expects "S&P 500 ex. Energy margin will fall from 12.7% peak (2021) to 11.4% (2023)".

27. Revisions sentiment. "Current breadth of negative EPS revisions consistent with prior recessions".

28. Bear case. And finally, “in a hard landing, S&P 500 could fall by 34% to 3150”.

Thanks for reading!