Daily Chartbook #94

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 petroleum inventory monitor. "BIG week for US commercial petroleum stocks, which fell by 8.8 MMbbl last week...the largest weekly crude draw since July 2020...was partially offset by rising product stocks (+2.8 gasoline, +3.5 diesel)".

2. Pending home sales (I). Pending sales fell for the 5th consecutive month, dropping 4.6% in October (vs. -5% expected) leaving YoY sales down 37% (largest annual drop ever).

3. Pending home sales (II). "Absent the COVID collapse, this is the weakest level for the Pending Home Sales Index since the nadir in June 2010".

4. Rent prices. "US Rents fell 1% in November, the 3rd straight monthly decline. The year-over-year % increase has now moved down for 12 consecutive months after peaking at 18.1% last November. At 4.6%, this is the smallest YoY increase since April 2021".

5. Affordability (or lack thereof). "The median American household would need to spend 46.3% of their income to afford payments on a median-priced home in the US, the highest % on record with data going back to 2006".

6. Global debt. "The total debt owed by households, businesses and governments stands at $290 trillion, up by more than a third from a decade ago: IIF. This presents a big problem in a new high-rate era as this debt comes due and becomes much more expensive to roll over".

7. Coincident indexes. "The number of states with increasing activity continues to fall".

8. Easing conditions (I). "Goldman Sachs says the easing in financial conditions over the last three weeks is worth 0.4-0.5 pp of GDP in 2023".

9. Easing conditions (II). The National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI) edged down to –0.27 in the week ending November 25, suggesting financial conditions loosened again".

10. Balance of trade. "October goods trade deficit moved higher to $99 billion vs. $90.6 billion est. & $91.9 billion in prior month (rev from $92.2 billion)".

11. Inventories. "October wholesale inventories (blue) +0.8% m/m vs. +0.5% est. & +0.6% prior … retail inventories (orange) -0.2% vs. +0.5% est. & -0.1% prior (rev down from +0.4%)".

12. Q3 GDP (I). GDP for Q3  was revised up to 2.9% from the initial estimate of 2.6%.

13. Q3 GDP (II). "If you only focus on the blue bars (and exclude the inventory swings), the picture is much less encouraging than GDP would indicate".

14. Corporate profits tick down. "After-tax profits as a share of gross value added for non-financial corporations, a measure of aggregate profit margins, shrank in the third quarter to 14.9% from 16.2% in the second quarter".

15. Chicago PMI. Chicago business barometer experienced a sharp unexpected drop in November, falling to 37.2 (lowest since May 2020). Estimates called for a moderate increase.

16. ADP employment change (I). Just 127k jobs were created in November, well below the 200k expected and the lowest amount since January 2021.

17. ADP employment change (II). "100k mfg lobs lost last month & almost a quarter-million leisure & hospitality jobs added. We're not producers, we're a fast food nation".

18. JOLTs (I). "There were 10.3 million job openings at the end of October, down from 10.7 million in September and a peak of close to 12 million early this year. Still very high by historical standards, but now clearly coming down".

19. JOLTs (II). "The ratio of job openings to unemployed workers ticked down to 1.7 from 1.9 in September, continuing its moderation in 2022. But it's still very elevated from pre-pandemic level".

20. JOLTs (III). "Layoff rates across broad industry groups are below their Feb 2020 level with one exception: Information, the one that contains many tech companies".

21. Broad inversions. "Over 80% of the Treasury curve is now inverted".

22. Global stocks & bonds. “The 60-day correlation between the Bloomberg Global Aggregate Bond Index and the MSCI All Country World Index of stocks climbed to the highest level since 2012”.

23. Junk exodus. "Junk bond funds have drawn inflows for 5 straight weeks--adding  $13.47 billion and making it the largest sustained run of inflows this year by far".

24. Margin debt. "Margin debt printed another new low, despite the equities squeeze in October".

25. Dow vs. S&P. "We are in very unusual territory, with the Dow outperforming the S&P by over 2 standard deviations. The only other time this has happened in the last +2 decades was during the bursting of the dot com bubble in 2001".

26. Technology, Media, Telecom. “Hedge funds are now underweight TMT stocks by -5.2% vs. $SPX, the most [underweight] level ever in the history of our [prime brokerage] data set (back to 2016).”

27. Improving breadth. "A decisive push above the August high of 13.6 on the SPX would confirm a double bottom for this indicator and increase the likelihood that October did mark a cyclical low from the SPX".

28. Nasdaq earnings. "Not only is earnings growth decelerating, but y/y operating earnings growth has contracted for two-straight quarters. Only 59% of NASDAQ listed companies beat estimates".

29. Overcomplacency? And finally, “markets are back in overoptimistic mode according to NDR”.

Thanks for reading!