Daily Chartbook #90

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

Programming note: As a reminder, Daily Chartbook will be off Thursday and Friday this week.

1. China lockdowns (I). "China's national daily Covid count nearing record high set in April during Shanghai's outbreak".

2. China lockdowns (II). From BofA: "The turnaround in China will likely take time. Daily Covid-19 cases in China, at over 20,000, have risen close to the peak in April this year .. in the meantime, many people will only reluctantly re-engage due to fear of getting sick".

3. Transitory. The October CPI data supports the idea that we are "moving past the firmest period for inflation and that a decent amount of the inflation we have seen over the past year will prove to be temporary or transitory in nature".

4. Core PCE estimates. "Consensus expects next year's core inflation to fall to 2.9% in the US".

5. Initial jobless claims. "US layoffs are set to rise, pointing to slower payroll growth next year".

6. Excess income is over. "Excess savings are no longer being bolstered by excess income because people are spending more and pandemic-related transfer payments from the government have ceased".

7. Household debt repayments. "Households have to repay $1.75 trillion each year, or almost 10% of disposable income; this number rises with every rate hike".

8. Q4 GDP. From Goldman: "Our Q4 GDP forecast now stands at +0.9% (qoq ar)".

9. Fed wins? "Funds and speculators abandon all pivot hopes, as they amass a record short position in 2-year Treasuries futures".

10. Junk bonds. "There is a straight feeding frenzy for Junk Bond ETFs right now, they've taken in $14b in Oct/Nov...More evidence ETF traders are betting worst is over w/ Fed hikes".

11. Bitcoin. "Bitcoin’s market cap continues to follow US money supply. As Bitcoin has lost $574 billion in market cap since the beginning of the year".

12. Crypto uses. "Crypto used most for grocery spending, while education/training services occupies last spot on list ".

13. Gold demand. "Central banks purchased a record amount of gold in 3Q".

14. Defensives. "Healthcare is the cheapest Defensive sector and third cheapest sector overall".

15. Low volatility performance. "Doing what it's supposed to".

16. Value outperformance. "Over the last 12 months, the S&P 500 Value index has outperformed the S&P by more than 13 percentage points. Haven't seen this type of outperformance since 2001".

17. Investor flows. The share of inflows to broad & large/mid-cap equity funds "has grown to 40%".

18. Weekly sector flows. "Last week, during which the S&P 500 was -0.7%, clients were big net buyers of US equities (+$3.3B) for the second consecutive week".

19. Wealthy investor outflows. "Private client outflows typically accelerate in Nov. and peak in Dec. amid tax loss selling".

20. Hedge fund flows. Flows have been recently "positive but still neutral over the past 4 weeks and not nearly as extreme (positive) as it was in mid-August".

21. Hedge fund shorts. "Over past few weeks, hedge funds haven’t let up much on net short positioning for S&P 500 futures".

22. Extreme short covering. "Covering has been extreme in the US, similar to August".

23. Low short interest. "Short interest for the typical stock remains extremely low".

24. Derating risk. From Morgan Stanley: "If December macro data surprises on the hawkish side and pushes the terminal rate higher, calling the step down into question, the equity market is exposed to a quick derating. That's a risk to our tactical upside call".

25. Equity positioning. From Deutsche: "Plenty of room for the rally to run further...Positioning is still very low...The combination of positioning returning to neutral and continued buybacks argues for a rally in the S&P 500 back to 4200 by year-end and to 4500 by the end of Q1 2023".

26. Correlations up. Average stock correlations are elevated.

27. Profit margins. "S&P 500 profit margins excluding Energy should return to 2019 levels next year".

28. Thanksgiving rally? "Very rare for SPX to be down 10%+ heading into Thanksgiving week...but when it is, the week has been positive ~92% of the time since 1945".

29. Improving breadth. And finally, “market breadth improved materially during this rally”.

Thanks for reading!