Daily Chartbook #271

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

1. Home prices. In the four weeks ending August 27, "the median home sale price was $379,975, up 4.8% from a year earlier. That’s the biggest increase since October."

2. Active listings. "Active listings...dropped 18.7% from a year earlier, the biggest decline since February 2022."

3. Challenger cuts. Employers cut 75k jobs in August, the most in 3 months and a 267% increase from a year ago.

4. Jobless claims. Initial jobless claims edged down by 4k to 228k (vs. 235k est) while continuing claims rose by 28k to 1.725 million (vs. 1.703 million est).

5. Small biz jobs. "Only 40% of small businesses said they were having trouble filling job openings…the lowest since 2021 and now just a single percentage point above pre-pandemic levels."

6. PCE (I). "In month/month terms, PCE #inflation (blue) +0.2% vs. +0.2% est./prior month … core (orange) also +0.2% vs. +0.2% est./prior month."

7. PCE (II). "Core PCE Deflator - rose 4.2% YoY in July (as expected but higher than June's +4.1%). Headline PCE jumped up to +3.3% YoY (also as expected) - the biggest jump in YoY prints since June 2022."

8. PCE (III). Core service ex-housing remained stubborn in July, rising 0.46% MoM to 4.7% YoY.

9. Personal income/spending (I). "July personal income (blue) +0.2% m/m vs. +0.3% est. & +0.3% in prior month … personal spending (orange) +0.8% vs. +0.7% est. & +0.6% in prior month."

10. Personal income/spending (II). In real terms, disposable income fell by 0.2% (first decline in 13 months) while spending increased by 0.6%.

11. Savings rate. The personal savings rate fell sharply in July to 3.5% (lowest since October 2022) from 4.3%, the biggest drop since January 2022.

12. Q3 GDP. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model estimate for Q3 GDP growth moved down to 5.6% from 5.9%.

13. De-dollarization. "The dollar’s share of FX reserves has declined from 72% in 2000 to current levels of 59%. An extremely slow-moving decrease."

14. CTAs vs. bonds. "We are starting to unlock systematic FI demand given the fast move lower in bond yields (and current short position)."

15. Retail flows. "Retail investor flows have reached new record highs over the last month."

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16. Retail favorites. "Inflow into popular retail ETFs somewhat stalled in August."

17. Client sector flows. BofA clients bought stocks in 7 out of 11 sectors last week (4th straight week of net buying) but sold Healthcare at the fastest pace since May 2022.

18. Exposure plans. Among JPMorgan clients, "most investors are anticipating DECREASING exposure to equities (71%) and INCREASING exposure to bonds (69%)."

19. AAII. "Despite the rebound since last Thursday's close, individual investors still aren't buying it. The weekly AAII poll showed little rebound in bullish sentiment."

20. NAAIM. Conversely, active managers chased price action last week as the NAAIM Exposure Index jumped to 61 from 34, erasing the previous week’s decline.

21. Institutional investor confidence. "August saw a +12.9 point jump (largest move since Dec 2020) in the North American institutional investor index to 103.8 (strongest reading since Sep 2022)."

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22. Investor Intelligence. “Almost all the net gains for the S&P 500 in recent years have come when the II Bull-Bear Spread has been above 20%.”

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23. HFs vs. China (I). "Our PB data show signs of capitulatory selling during the first 3 weeks of August."

24. HFs vs. China (II). "This month’s cumulative net selling in Chinese equities - onshore and offshore combined - is approaching record levels vs. monthly net flows of the past decade…this is predominantly due to long selling (>70% of total notional sold is long)."

25. Tech A/D. "Tech’s 10-day advance/decline line went from one of its most oversold readings in the last year a couple weeks ago to one of its most overbought today. "

26. SPX valuations. "The S&P 500 valuations continue to diverge from that of the equal-weight index."

27. SPX vs. leading indicators. "Stocks have been defying the very negative message from leading economic data for some time now."

28. Decomposing Q2 beats. Margins did the heavy lifting in terms of Q2 earnings beats.

29. EPS guidance. "Our 3-month ratio of above-vs. below-consensus earnings guidance jumped to 1.3x, the highest since 2021 and well above 0.8x (average)."

30. VIX seasonality. And finally, “there are no immediate catalysts, but VIX loves surging from mid September.”

Thanks for reading!