Daily Chartbook #72

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

1. US oil exports. "Combined U.S. exports of crude oil and refined petroleum products surged to 11.4 million barrels/day last week, which was nearly 2 million more than prior week and highest on record".

2. Floor price? From BofA: "OPEC+ and SPR signals elevate ‘Brent put’ to $80/bbl".

3. Freight activity (I). Truckload spot rates have fallen to a new cycle low. As a reminder, we are in what is supposed to be "peak season".

4. Freight activity (II). Demand for flatbed trucking in the US also remains subdued.

5. Freight activity (III). "Outside of the COVID lockdown extremes, tender rejection rates have only been this low during the depths of the 2019 trucking freight recession".

6. Recession scenario forecasts. From Goldman: "Our forecast for an 11% decline in earnings in a recession would lead to a broad-based slowdown in cash spending".

7. Recession probability. "Professional forecasters' probability of recession 4 quarters ahead".

8. Initial claims. "Starting to see signs of a labor market slowdown, but claims still 10% lower than late-July high as employers continue to view labor as being + valuable".

9. Corner office outlook. "CEO confidence has plunged to a record low".

10. Durable goods (I). New orders were up 0.4% in September (vs. +0.2% expected). New orders have now been up 6 out of the last 7 months.

11. Durable goods (II). "However, ex-transportation, new orders tumbled 0.5% MoM (vs +0.2% exp) - that is the biggest MoM drop since April 2020".

12. Q3 GDP (I). The US economy grew 2.6% (annualized) in Q3

13. Q3 GDP (II). Top 5 subcomponent contributors.

14. Q3 GDP (III). "Net exports contributed 2.8% to 3Q22 GDP, most since 3Q80 (unlikely to persist as positive driver)".

15. Q3 GDP (IV). “The main story in Q3 GDP is that private domestic demand (GDP less inventories, trade and government) ground to a halt, up just 0.1% SAAR. This series tends to be more useful in informing us about the outlook for GDP than GDP itself.”

16. Retail army: still net sellers. Retail investors net bought $1.5 billion over the past week, "ending a four-week selling streak...Nonetheless, the order imbalance remained -0.5 standard deviations below 12M average" as they remain net sellers of equities and bonds.

17. Massive buyers. Households have bought "more than c.$4trn in equities since 2020 - reversal not seen yet".

18. Equity allocations. BofA private client equity allocation has declined.

19. Defensive positioning. "Mutual funds' equity beta is 1 standard deviation below average, which indicates defensive positioning".

20. NAAIM. Active manager equity exposure has moved up to 54 from 43 last week.

21. Expensive puts. "Small traders paying up to buy put options. Another example of 'not a buy signal, but a start making preparations to buy signal'."

22. A lot of puts. "Puts on the S&P 500 is still off the charts".

23. No Fed Put though. "2022 has had the most negative days in ~20 years distinguishing this bear market in absence of Fed Put".

24. Short by comparison. "S&P 500 has gone 205 days without reaching its prior high, which is much shorter than longest streaks on record and even shorter than 2015-2016 drawdown".

25. Energy buybacks in focus. Energy companies are "increasingly focused on share buybacks" over Capex, R&D, and dividends.

26. Buyback forecast. From Goldman: "We cut our buyback growth forecast to +5% in 2022 ($965 billion) and -10% in 2023 ($869 billion)".

27. Room to fall for stocks vs. bonds. And finally, “the fall in stocks and bonds this year has only taken the [stock-bond] ratio to just below its mean”.

Thanks for reading!