Daily Chartbook #175

Welcome back to Daily Chartbook: the day’s best charts & insights, curated.

1. Oil prices. "Brent crude jumped by 6.6% yesterday, which was largest one-day spike since last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine."

2. Oil price distribution. “Implied distribution of oil moving up. Basically this is the distribution of possible future prices of oil - implied by the prices of options. More tail risk.”

3. Gas prices. "Average gasoline price has been trending higher this year, moving up from ~$3.10 to ~$3.50 per gallon."

4. Financial conditions. "The nominal GS US Financial Conditions Index tightened by 23.1bp to 99.74 over the last week, reflecting higher equity prices, lower BBB credit spreads, and a weaker dollar. The real GS FCI eased by 17.0bp to 99.41."

5. Q1 GDP. "GS boosted their Q1 GDP tracking estimate to +2.6% (qoq ar), reflecting better-than-expected consumption and construction data."

6. Heavy truck sales. "Heavy truck sales were at 484 thousand SAAR in March, down from an upwardly revised 516 thousand in February, and up 7% from 464 thousand SAAR in March 2022."

7. Autos. "The market had another week of larger than typical gains, increasing another +0.51%. Out of the twenty-two segments that we report on each week, nineteen had gains last week."

8. Factory orders. "Feb Factory Orders tumbled 0.7% MoM (and worse still, January was revised down to a 2.1% decline)...That slows the YoY growth in US Factory Orders to just 2.7% - the slowest since Feb 2021."

9. JOLTs (I). "Feb JOLTs report bullish for stocks, w/ number of job openings dropping 630k to 9.93mln, lowest since May21, a figure Fed is likely going to be pleased with."

10. JOLTs (II). "Openings are down from a year ago in every major industry, but up from Feb. 2020 in every industry too. Consistent with the overall story of a labor market that has cooled somewhat but is still very strong."

11. JOLTs (III). "Less consistent story with quits. Quits have fallen in most industries relative to a year ago, but are actually slightly *higher* now in leisure and hospitality than last Feb."

12. JOLTs (IV). "The ratio of vacancies to unemployed workers fell to 1.67, the lowest since late 2021."

13. Commodity ETF flows. "Commodity long bets picking up again."

14. Bond volatility. "Bond investors are bracing for at least another year of rocky trading, abandoning hopes that in 2023 the market would return to normality."

15. Global stock flows. "We have seen a huge uptick in buying of US stocks. This has been the biggest net buying of US stocks since March 2020...but there could be much more room if we are to catch up to the rest of the world."

16. Trading flows. "'Largest notional net buying since Sep ‘19, driven by risk on flows with long buys outpacing short sales ~2.5 to 1.' They have bought, but could be forced into buying even more."

17. Investor flows. "Government bond ETFs continue to see strong inflows and have received 2/3 of all fund inflows on rolling one-month basis (next largest group is large-/mid-cap stocks at 17%)."

18. Risky vs. safe. "Last time we were here (in Q2 2020) it was a very good time to buy & hold equities for 3 months, 6 months and 12 months."

19. Risk demand. "Global risk demand has picked up massively but remains below its previous peak."

20. Risk appetite. "The GS Risk appetite indicator level is very close to neutral."

21. Exposure plans. Plans to increase exposure to equities among JPMorgan clients ticked down.

22. Macro vs. single stocks. "When the squeeze hits you buy the broader exposure first and think about the next step later."

23. Long/short ratio. Hedge fund long/short ratio remains deeply depressed.

24. Big vs. small tech. "NASDAQ 100 Tech sector has decisively outperformed Russell 2000 Tech sector of late."

25. Global earnings sentiment. "The most recent moves for all major markets have been down-ticks."

26. Recession vs. earnings. "Economic recessions tend to overlap with earnings recessions. Chart shows the past 50 years, which have seen seven economic downturns. Only two coincided with a general uptrend in earnings — and they were in the stagflationary environment of the 1970/80s."

27. Top 20 vs. the field. And finally, “the rally in the S&P500 since the beginning of the year has been driven by 20 stocks...The implication for investors is that this market is not driven by broad-based higher growth expectations but instead by what has happened with rates.”

Thanks for reading!