Daily Chartbook #52

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

1. Strategic Petroleum Reserves. "SPR release is clearly unsustainable. If the Biden administration continues to release 5 million bbls a week or 0.714 million b/d from now to the end of 2023, SPR would fall below 100 million bbls".

2. Inflation-adjusted home prices continue to decline. "On a price-to-rent basis, the Case-Shiller National and Composite 20 indexes declined again in July for the second consecutive month."

3. Mortgage rate. The average rate on a Freddie Mac 30-year mortgage "has moved up to 6.70%, its highest level since July 2007. The 3.69% spike in rates over the last year is the largest YoY increase since 1980-81".

4. Global outlook. Real economic growth projections for the G7.

5. Bottlenecks are collapsing. "The number of ships waiting to get into Port of LA/Long Beach “has declined to only 6 .. It had peaked at 106 ships in Jan".

6. Global shipping rates are plunging. "Meanwhile, container shipping costs .. from China to the US and Europe have declined by more than 40% .. nearing their early 2021 levels".

7. September CPI. Cleveland Fed's CPI nowcast has inflation at +0.3% for September.

8. Labor market remains tight. Initial jobless claims totaled 193k last week, much lower than the expected 215k and the lowest in ~6 months.

9. Q2 GDP revisions. The "BEA reported that (after two revisions), the Q2 GDP dropped -0.6%, in line with expectations and unchanged from the previous, 2nd estimate".

10. Corporate profits rise to new record. Corporate profits rose 6.2% (vs. 9% expected) in Q2 to $2.53 trillion. “Despite eroding inflation, softening demand & limited productivity, margins remained” elevated.

11. Transcript talk (I). Number of times Covid-19, supply chain, inflation, and interest rates were mentioned in company transcripts across quarters.

12. Transcript talk (II). The same, but for headwinds and job cuts.

13. Commodity capex. "Capex for commodity producers just hit new lows when adjusted for GDP levels...tightening and availability for capital drying up certainly doesn’t help…supply constraints likely to stay with us for a long time."

14. Big day for bonds yesterday. "The Bloomberg Aggregate Index saw its biggest one-day return yesterday so far this century".

15. Bond sales headed to 10-year low. According to BofA, "new bond sales next month will likely range between $60 billion and $80 billion, down from $120 billion last October -- and lower than any October since at least 2012"

16. MOVE. "US Treasury market volatility is the highest since 2009".

17. Group of Seven nations. "G-7 benchmark yields have surged above it's two-decade average".

18. Buybacks under pressure. "Corporate event data shows a downtick in total buyback announcements this year after a 2021 surge".

19. IPO performance. We’ve noted the recent plunge in IPO volume—here’s how the performance of the largest and most liquid US IPOs (blue) compares to the S&P 500 YTD (orange).

20. Record options trading. ETF volumes as a percentage of total equities activity hit their highest level in 5 years at 29%

21. Top 10 stocks. “While 'Mega Caps' valuations have started to normalise, they remain extremely overvalued relative to the S&P500 index”.

22. EV-to-sales. Enterprise values relative to sales "have just arrived at the top of the 2000 dotcom bubble".

23. NAAIM. "NAAIM Exposure Index down to 12.6% - below May/Jun levels and to the lowest level since Mar 2020".

24. Very bearish sentiment. AAII bears outnumber bulls by 43%, a mark achieved only twice before: October 1990 and March 2009 (data going back to 1987).

25. Total drawdown. And finally, the "drawdown in total market capitalization of US equity and fixed income", visualized. You may have seen another version of this chat making the rounds this week—this is the corrected one.

Thanks for reading!