Daily Chartbook #50

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 rates. Rates on US 30-year fixed mortgages have topped 7%.

2. Home prices (I). The Case-Shiller Home Price index increased to 16.1% YoY (below expectations of 17%), but home price growth continues to decelerate.

3. Home prices (II). Case-Shiller home prices (20-city composite) dropped -0.8% MoM in July for the first monthly decrease since 2019.

4. Home prices (III). Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac home prices also declined in July, falling 0.6% MoM for the largest drop since March 2011 (excluding the pandemic).

5. Rents come down. Rents dropped for the first time this year, falling by 0.2% in September. "The year-over-year increase moved down to 7.5%, the slowest growth rate since May 2021".

6. Surprise jump in new home sales. New home sales surged by an unexpected 28.8% in August (vs. -2.2% expected), good for the second largest increase ever (June 2020, +30.6%).

7. No surprises. "Goldman's US MAP index of economic surprises continues to hover around 0."

8. When misery gets company. "Recessions tend to get triggered when the fed funds rate reaches the misery index". Misery Index = Unemployment Rate + Inflation Rate

1. Consumer confidence improves. "The improvement was broad-based, with all major confidence subindexes like jobs, incomes, spending plans and expectations rising."

10. Durable goods. Durable goods orders declined by 0.2% (vs. -0.4% expected) but orders for core capital goods—a proxy for future private business investment—jumped by 1.3% (vs. +0.2% expected).

11. Richmond Fed Manufacturing imrpoves. The index improved "in September, up to 0 vs. -10 est. & -8 in prior month; new orders and business conditions ticked higher but are still contracting; shipments popped into expansion; employment fell to 0 (lowest since July 2020)".

12. Fx uncertainty. Currency volatility is at its highest since 2011 (excluding the pandemic).

13. Volatility index. VIX call options volume yesterday hit the highest levels since March 2020.

14. Frequent losses. "The S&P 500 finished in the red on 56% of the 184 year-to-date U.S. trading days and is on track to have the second-highest annual proportion of loss-producing trading days since inception in 1957."

15. US Treasury yields +4%. "1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 year Treasury yields all closed above 4% Monday. The last time that happened was in October 2007".

16. Bond drawdown (I). Here's the bond market drawdown (worst in 70 years) visualized across the curve.

17. Bond drawdown (II). YTD performance of investment grade bonds from 1972-present. This year's drawdown is the worst by far.

18. Flocking to safety. "U.S. government bond funds have accounted for >73% of ETF inflows over past month, while large-/mid-cap equity fund flows turned negative".

19. Tech IPOs. Activity has crumbled in 2022.

20. Exposure plans are neutral. "Are you more likely to increase or decrease equity exposure over the coming days/weeks?".

21. Fintwit vs Consumer. The gap between sentiment on Twitter and among consumers is narrowing.

22. Oversold. "Coming into this week ZERO (out of 72) industry groups were above their 10-week averages. In the past 20 years, this has now happened 15 times (in 7 different clusters)".

23. High & stable margins > cyclicals. Stocks with high and stable margins are seeing upgrades while cyclicals get downgraded.

24. However… From Goldman: "Margins are at all-time highs and we think vulnerable to downgrades".

25. Investor flows. Bank of America's "clients’ biggest net buys were in Health Care stocks (fifth largest inflow in our weekly history since ’08)".

26. Price-to-sales. And finally, “the median price to sales ratio in the Nasdaq 100 has moved down to 4.5x, its lowest level since March 2020. It peaked last November at 8.5x and the Nasdaq 100 is down over 30% since”.

Thanks for reading!