Daily Chartbook #89

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

1. Diesel vs gasoline. "Record spread between average diesel and gasoline prices in U.S.".

2. Natural gas prices. US natural gas prices are expected to come down in 2023 and 2024.

3. China. A surge in new Covid cases in China is throwing a wrench in reopening prospects.

4. GDP forecasts (I). From BofA: "We expect a mild recession in 1Q-3Q 23. With the Fed hiking to 5.0-5.25% in our forecast, history suggests a soft landing is unlikely".

5. GDP forecasts (II). From Goldman: "The consensus calls for negative real GDP growth in Q1 and Q2 next year".

6. Jobs forecast. From Goldman: "We expect the jobs-workers gap to shrink to the 2mm threshold that we estimate is needed by the end of 2023, led by a large decline in job openings and a 1/2pp rise in the unemployment rate".

7. Inflation forecast. "Goldman Sachs expects PCE core inflation at 2.9% in December 2023".

8. No cuts. It doesn’t expect any rate cuts in 2023.

9. Thanksgiving meals (I). "Thanksgiving Cost Index up +20.1%, highest since 1986".

10. Thanksgiving meals (II). "A classic Thanksgiving meal for 10 is up +20% YoY".

11. DXY volatility. "Currency fluctuations have increased sharply on an intra-day basis".

12. Dollar shorts. Investors increased short positions on the US dollar to the most since July 2021.

13. Retail retreat. "2022 has been the year of the retail implosion".

14. Bullish vs. bearish sentiment. "As things stand, sentiment is increasingly less bullish, and increasingly more bearish".

15. Positioning up. Stock positioning across retail, institutional, and foreign investors (vs. the past 12 months) has moved back up to positive territory and is at its highest in a year.

16. VIPs vs. most-shorted. Hedge fund's most shorted stocks are significantly outperforming hedge fund VIP stocks. Top 50 VIP names as of June 30 here.

17. CTAs net long. "Commodity Trading Advisors purchased ~$146 Billion worth of equities over the last month and are now net long for the first time this year".

18. Gross leverage. "Equity L/S gross leverage has started to roll over in the last couple of days".

19. Recessionary or not? "Either we have fallen too much, or too little".

20. Earnings recessions. "Earnings recessions take time to play out".

21. Q4 EPS cuts. "Analysts have been cutting their Q4 2022 and quarterly 2023 earnings numbers every week since the start of the current quarter".

22. EPS outlook. "While some analysts have cut estimates premised on lower profit margins, few have reduced sales forecasts".

23. Global earnings. "Leading indicators project a contraction in the global earnings growth profile in the next 12 months, well short of the consensus expectations of 4% growth".

24. Source of sales. "Very strong relative performance for the 'international sales' basket lately".

25. Fair value. "S&P 500 has established a trading range around theoretical 'fair value'".

26. Resistance levels. "The SPX must regain three cyclical bear market resistances to confirm a bullish cyclical turn".

27. 2023 S&P price target. Goldman expects the S&P 500 to end 2023 right around current levels.

28. Value still cheap. "Despite the strong comeback over the last two years, we find that valuation differences between value and expensive stocks are still wider than at the peak of the dot-com bubble".

29. Lagging VIX. "Equity put/call ratio (blue) and MOVE Index (white) recently moved to highest since March 2020 (put/call spiked to highest since 1997), but VIX (orange) has thus far been left out, not yet coming anywhere close to where it was in that period".

30. VIX signals. And finally, “the 2 horizontal lines highlighting the 20 and 24 VIX readings have been the warning track for each of this year’s 4 bear market rallies”.

Thanks for reading!

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MONDAY BONUS: Cheat sheet. Global markets week in review.