Daily Chartbook #246

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

1. Home prices. "The typical U.S. home sold for roughly $382,000 during the four weeks ending July 23, up 2.6% from a year earlier, the biggest increase since November."

2. Active listings. "Active listings dropped 16.9% from a year earlier, the biggest drop since February 2022...[they] were down slightly from a month earlier; typically, they post month-over-month increases at this time of year."

3. Rent prices. "US Rents are 0.7% lower than a year ago, the biggest YoY decline since January 2021."

4. Pending home sales. Pending home sales ticked up unexpectedly by 0.3% (vs. -0.5% est) after declining 2.5% last month. Sales are down 14.8% YoY.

5. Truckload volumes. "Truckload volumes are up 15% from their YTD lows (excluding holidays). They are breaking the typical seasonal cycle of flat to down volumes in most Julys. Combine this with Yellow declaring bankruptcy, and we could have a very interesting back half of 2023."

6. Signing bonuses. "Approximately 4.9% of all US job postings mentioned a signing bonus in June, down from recent highs of 5.6% set in September 2022, but well above the pre-pandemic average of 1.8%."

7. Jobless claims. "Initial jobless claims declined -7,000 to 221,000. The 4 week average declined -3,750 to 233,750. With a one week lag, continuing claims declined -50,000 to 1.690 million. All of these are generally 5 month lows."

8. Q2 GDP. "The US economy grew at a 2.4% annualized pace last quarter. Consumer spending led growth once again. Business spending grew the most in 6 quarters."

9. Real consumer spending. "2Q23 personal consumption +1.6% (q/q ann.) vs. +1.2% est. & +4.2% in prior quarter."

10. PCE Prices (I). "US GDP Price Index falls to 2.2% in Q2 2023 after hitting 9% in Q2 2022."

11. PCE Prices (II). "2Q23 Core PCE Price Index +3.8% (q/q ann.) vs. +4% est. & +4.9% prior."

12. Durable goods (I). "The headline orders printed a 4.7% MoM surge (almost 4x the expected 1.3% rise) - that is the biggest monthly rise in durable goods orders since July 2020."

13. Durable goods (II). "Excluding transportation, orders climbed only 0.6%, which makes sense given the 69.6% surge in non-defense aircraft orders."

14. Inventories. "June retail inventories (blue) +0.7% m/m vs. +0.4% est. & +0.8% prior; wholesale inventories (orange) -0.3% vs. -0.1% est. & -0.3% prior."

15. Gas prices. "Gasoline futures suggest that prices at the pump, already their highest in three months, have further to rise."

16. Oil consumption. "The world is consuming more crude than ever…we use enough crude to fill about 6,500 Olympic-size swimming pools every day."

17. O&G rigs. "Energy companies just reported the steepest decline in operating rigs in 3 years."

18. Commodity ETF flows. "Broad-based commodity ETFs took in more than 600 million USD last week, the biggest one-week haul since March of 2022."

19. Stocks vs. bonds. "Markets are offering the best incentive pricing for half a century to rebalance portfolios away from equities and back into bonds, equaling only the extreme divergence seen in January 2000."

20. HFs vs. China. "Hedge funds net bought Chinese equities on Tuesday (7/25) at the fastest pace since Oct '22...notional net buying ranks in the 99th percentile vs. the past five years."

21. HFs vs China (II). "Hedge fund investors’ net exposures to Chinese stocks (relative to their global equity holdings) are still 460bps below where they were in January this year."

22. Global equity flows. "The latest squeeze is basically a US love story only. US has been the main beneficiary of equity inflows."

23. Global Risk-Love. "Global Equity Risk-Love, our contrarian sentiment indicator for equities, has risen from near-panic in March to the 78th percentile now, with optimism brewing in almost all factors...except positioning."

24. Global Risk-Love (II). Risk-Love Indicator heatmap.

25. Put/call ratio. "30-day average of equity put/call ratio (from CBOE) hovering near lowest since April 2022 and near lower end of range going back a couple decades."

26. Margin debt. A reversal higher in margin debt suggests higher risk appetite among investors.

27. Active managers. Active managers continue adding exposure. NAAIM Equity Exposure Index ticked up to 101.8 from 99.1, the highest since November 2021.

28. AAII sentiment. "Investor sentiment turned more Bullish. Net % Bullish in the 77th percentile. Bearish +3%, Neutral +2%."

29. Communications discount. "Despite a huge rally Ytd, communications remains extremely discounted vs. the S&P 500. Relative PE is 4.3 standard deviations below pre-pandemic 5y average. EPS growth is expected to lead the S&P 500 in 2Q and could outstrip it by 1,870 bps from 3Q-2Q24."

30. VIX seasonality. And finally—as we enter a seasonally volatile period—today's 9.26% spike in the VIX was the largest since early May. 

Thanks for reading!