Daily Chartbook #81

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

1. Expensive winter. EIA now expects US natural gas prices to average $6.09 MMBtu this winter, which would be "the highest real price since winter 2009-10". 

2. US petroleum inventory monitor. "US commercial total petroleum inventories fell by 0.8 MMbbl last week, as product draws overwhelmed a reasonably sizable 3.9 MMbbl crude build".

3. Mortgage rates. "The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has been above 7% for the last three weeks, something that hasn't been seen since 2001".

4. Mortgage applications. "Applications for home purchase mortgages (meaning, excluding refinances) are down 40% on the year".

5. Homeowner equity. "$1.3T (7.6%) in equity vanished from the market in Q3 as prices pulled back, the largest quarterly dollar decline on record, and the largest on a percentage basis since 2009".

6. Real estate prices vs. interest rates. "A very simple and yet effective chart. House prices plotted against mortgage rates".

7. Deal hunters. "Most consumers are waiting for discounts before they start their holiday shopping".

8. Inventory-to-sales vs. jobs. "As retail inventory/sales ratio ex-autos (orange) has picked up considerably, companies have been shedding warehousing & storage jobs (blue), to tune of -49k since June".

9. Chicago NFCI. "The National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI) edged down to –0.11 in the week ending November 4, suggesting financial conditions continued to loosen".

10. Q4 GDP. Atlanta Fed's GPNow model estimates 4.0% real GDP growth in Q4, up from 3.6% on November 3.

11. CPI expectations (I). "The consensus expects inflation to fall to 3% by the end of next year, but the historical pace of price declines would suggest CPI may not touch 3% until 2024".

12. CPI expectations (II). "JPM projection is for a significant move lower in inflation from here".

13. CPI vs. M2. "If CPI follows M2 stock, risk-on won't hold back".

14. USD vs US10Y yield. "Rolling 120d correlation between U.S. dollar (blue) and 10y Treasury yield (orange) has risen to highest since August 2020".

15. Central bank demand. "The increase in CB purchases reflects demand for a politically neutral reserve asset: In our view, this boost to CB demand primarily reflects demand for a politically neutral store of value".

16. CBOE CPCE. "Equity put/call ratio spiked yesterday to highest since March 2008 … magnitude surpassed March 2020 spike by narrow degree".

17. Put skew. "Put skew has fallen significantly in 2022 as index put options have failed to provide downside protection for many institutional hedgers".

18. Index & ETF options. "Index and ETF options trading volumes have exceeded $1T/day, with more and more over the course of 2022".

19. Record ETF trading. "ETFs have traded $41 trillion dollars worth of shares in 2022, which is already an annual record with 6 weeks to go still".

20. Lows > highs streak. "57 days in a row of new lows > new highs. In past 2+ decades, only stretch that was longer was the 70+ day run at the end of 2008".

21. S&P fwd P/E. "The S&P 500 is slightly cheap to its 10-year average forward PE (16.1x vs. 17.1x). This is due to cyclical sectors getting cheaper. Growthier sectors are more expensive than their historical averages".

22. Room to fall. "Drop in S&P 500 blended forward 12m EPS not yet anywhere close to recessionary".

23. S&P 500 vs. VIX. "The traditional inverse relationship between stocks & volatility is breaking down".

24. Crypto disaster. Crypto markets collapsed to their lowest levels in 2 years after FTX liquidity issues temporarily give way to Binance takeover which now appears unlikely.

25. Growth vs. Value (I). "Value has just outperformed Growth by a truly anomalous amount (11.5 points, +3 standard deviations) over the last 50 days".

26. Growth vs. Value (II). And finally, “value stocks have notched highest returns in 20 years”.

Thanks for reading!