Daily Chartbook #62

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

1. Rents decline. "Redfin just reported that the median US rent registered the first monthly decline (!) in a long while".

2. Mortgage rates do not. "The 30-year mortgage rate in the US has moved up to 6.92%, its highest level in over 20 years".

3. Money supply. Month over month, M2 growth "averaged +1.9% in 2020 and +1% in 2021". This year saw the first negative monthly dip since 2009 and the average gain has been just 0.1%.

4. Jobless claims rise. "Initial claims rose 9,000 to 228,000, and the 4 week average rose 5,000 to 211,500. Continuing claims, which lag somewhat, increased 3,000 to 1,368,000".

5. Long way to go. "US jobs-workers gap has fallen by roughly 40% of the amount required to tame wage inflation by end-2023".

6. Upper hand. "Workers who switched jobs received pay increases of 7.1% over the last year vs. 5.2% for those who stayed at their jobs. With data going back to 1997, this is the widest gap we've ever seen".

7. Consumer spending. "The good news is that trends in discretionary spending and credit card spending support our view that we are not yet in a recession. The bad news is that we expect a recession".

8. Inflation: hotter-than-expected (I). CPI rose 0.4% (vs. +0.2% expected) in September to 8.2% YoY (vs. 8.1% expected) while core CPI increased by 0.6% (vs. 0.5% expected) to 6.6% YoY (vs. 6.5% expected), the highest since 1982.

9. Inflation: hotter-than-expected (II). Month-to-month change with topline contributions.

10. Inflation: hotter-than-expected (III). "Year-on-year inflation is now mostly a core services story—rising prices for housing and consumer services are now responsible for half of total headline inflation, about as much as core goods, energy, and food combined".

11. Inflation: hotter-than-expected (IV). "Shelter's contribution to headline CPI YoY% rising rapidly".

12. Inflation: hotter-than-expected (V). A 1% drop provides little relief on used car prices which are still “~50% above pre-pandemic levels”.

13. Inflation: hotter-than-expected (VI). "Food, Shelter & Medical Care Services combined contributed 4.2 percentage points of the CPI’s 8.2% annual gain".

14. Sticky prices. The Atlanta Fed's "sticky prices" inflation is at a 40-year high on both a YoY and MoM basis.

15. Today’s big swing. “SPY gapped down more than 2% versus yesterday's close when the opening bell rang this morning”, something it has only done 4 times since 1993.

16. Good is bad. "S&P 500 has embraced 'good news is bad news' mindset ... since early July, 86% of labor market data releases that were weaker-than-forecasted resulted in a 1d gain; ~70% of stronger-than-expected forecasts resulted in a 1d decline".

17. NAAIM. "Active investment managers who were in hurry to buy last week were in a hurry to sell this week". The exposure index is down to 19.8 from 38.1 on October 5.

18. Calm VIX. The VIX's 50-day moving average has been relatively muted, "hovering below pain points seen in 2020, 2011, 2008, and 2002".

19. Resilient ETF flow. "Equity ETF flows remain very strong this year, despite the decline in stocks"

20. Price-to-sales ratios. "The median stock in the Russell 1,000 (large-caps) has seen its price to sales ratio fall from 3.3 to 2.2 this year. Tech has seen the biggest drop from 7.7 down to 3.6".

21. Asset correlations. "Everything is trading as if it is the same thing."

22. Light hedge fund positioning ahead of CPI. "Goldman calculates that net equity positioning fell to fresh 5-year lows [yesterday] ahead of the US CPI data, for the overall Prime book as well as Fundamental L/S managers".

23. Crash or rally? "Institutional option traders are betting heavily on a Crash. Seasonality suggests the potential for a tradable rally. Soon, one is going to be very wrong."

24. Panic buying. "At the height of panic-buying today, more than 45% of all NYSE securities traded on an uptick. That's the 2nd-highest amount in at least 25 years on the day after the S&P 500 set a 52-week low (suggesting short-covering)".

25. Q3 earnings. With Q3 earnings underway, "historically, October has brought highest average daily dispersion to U.S. equities, just ahead of January’s average".

26. Past performance does not guarantee future results. "The market has no memory; the best guess of future returns does not depend on the immediate past".

27. Sleep tight. And finally, "since 1993, all of the S&P 500's gains have occurred outside regular trading hours".

Thanks for reading!