Daily Chartbook #55

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

1. Global manufacturing contracts. Yesterday's JPMorgan Manufacturing PMI showed global contraction for the first time since June 2020, dropping to 49.8 amid faster contractions in output and new orders.

2. Container rate relief ahead. "Container volumes back to pre-covid levels. This chart tracks the volume of container loadings at the point of origin. Rates will soon reflect this".

3. Car prices. From Morgan Stanley: "To our clients who refused to pay above sticker for a new car, your patience is about to pay off. A stalling US SAAR and a 17mo high in new days’ supply may finally bring deflation to new prices. Make room in your garage for a cheaper new car".

4. Historically tight. "Outside of the GFC, and the Corona virus pandemic, we have not seen a sharper 15d tightening of financial conditions this century".

5. PCE vs unemployment. Unemployment rate projections based on the PCE price index.

6. JOLTs (I). “This was the largest one-month drop in openings on record other than in April 2020. Openings still high by historical standards, but this sure looks like the drop in labor demand we've been watching for”.

7. JOLTs (II). Job openings one-month net change with contributions.

8. Job openings vs. unemployed workers. The ratio of job openings to unemployed workers moved down to 1.7 in August but remains high.

9. Factory orders. Factory orders remained unchanged in August which "pushed the YoY rise in US factory orders down to +11.2% - the lowest since Feb 2021".

10. Dollar talk. The number of news articles referencing the US dollar have spiked.

11. The good… "The good news is that there is still a fairly big cushion of savings. If the rate of decline this year continues, it supports about 0.5% growth in consumer spending growth each month. At the current rate … excess savings won’t disappear until next summer."

12. The bad… "However, we worry about a breaking point for the US consumer .. that the consumer could ‘crack’ in the face of a bad job market and start to view ‘unneeded excess saving’ as ‘ vital precautionary saving."

13. More EM pain ahead? Emerging markets have gone a record 594 days without making a new cycle high.

14. Growth vs. Value. Growth stocks are having their worst year relative to value stocks since 2001.

15. Cheap profitless tech. On a price-to-sales basis, non-profitable tech is extremely cheap relative to US stocks.

16. S&P forward P/S. "S&P 500’s forward price/sales ratio has gotten crushed this year but is still hovering at levels consistent with average seen in few years leading up to pandemic … before that, it’s higher today than it was at any point between 2001 and late 2017".

17. Utilities panic. "When people panic, they sell everything at the same time, and correlations spike. The correlation among Utility stocks has just breached +0.90 (out of a scale of -1.0 to +1.0). That's only happened twice before in 23 years."

18. Trade of the year. Long energy, short Bitcoin has been a very profitable trade in 2022.

19. Flock to safety continues. US government funds account for 55%of positive ETF flows over the past month.

20. Large ETF inflows. "Last week, during which the S&P 500 fell another 2.9%, BofA clients were net buyers of US equities ($2.6B) for the fourth week. Biggest ETF weekly inflow since Dec 2021".

21. Cumulative asset flows. Equity flows remain steady but there's plenty of cash on the sidelines (money market).

22. Bounce levels (I). US equity futures positioning by asset managers and levered funds is at bounce levels.

23. Bounce levels (II). As is the average percentile of (16) sentiment indicators.

24. Investing is hard. "27% of large-cap active managers have beaten the S&P 500 over the last 12 months".

25. Domestic vs. International sales. Companies with domestic-based revenues have outperformed companies with international-based revenues in 2022.

26. Priorities. Balance sheet improvements are the top priority for global fund managers looking at companies with cash flow.

27. CEOs vs analysts. Who will blink first?

28. Bear market rallies. And finally, “since the Nasdaq was created in 1971, 80% of the 40 biggest one-day rallies occurred during the last three bear markets. That's 10 times what you'd expect on the assumption that rallies occur randomly”.

Thanks for reading!