Daily Chartbook #114

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 levels. "US total commercial petroleum inventories fell by 3.1 MMbbl last week".

2. National rents (I). "Rents nationally fall by 0.8% month-over-month (in December). This is the fourth consecutive monthly decline, and the third largest monthly decline in the history of our estimates, which start in January 2017".

3. National rents (II). 2022 was "the second fastest year of rent growth in our index’s history (going back to 2017)" but "nowhere close to the astronomical 17.6 percent increase in prices that we saw in 2021".

4. National apartment demand. "Net demand for apartments ended in negative territory for calendar 2022".

5. Surprises. "The only area where data is surprising to the downside is Housing/RE".

6. Auto sales. "~13.7M vehicles sold in the US in 2022  (-8% YoY & lowest totals since 2011)".

7. Auto delinquencies. "Auto defaults are up 47bp since June '21 (trough)".

8. Financial conditions. "Financial conditions remain much too easy for the Fed's liking".

9. Mild recession. "BofA Economics team forecasts a mild recession starting 1Q23".

10. Challenger cuts. Job cut announcements moved down in December, but the number of cuts (~44k) was the second highest of 2022 and +129% YoY.

11. ADP employment (I). Private businesses added 235k jobs in December, well above expectations of 150k.

12. ADP employment (II). Changes in private employment by sector.

13. Jobless claims. Initial claims rose by 205k (vs. 225k expected) while continuing claims ticked down slightly.

14. Balance of trade (I). The US trade deficit narrowed to $61.5 billion in November as both imports and exports fell by 6.5% and 2%, respectively.

15. Balance of trade (II). "The 20% one-month decline in the deficit was the single biggest drop in the US trade deficit on a percentage basis going back to the global financial crisis".

16. Global composite PMI. "Global private sector output fell at a slightly softer rate as the latest reading ticked up to 48.2 in December. However, the downturn in new orders was the fastest in over two-and-a-half years".

17. US Sector PMI. "Business activity declined in six out of seven US sectors…Technology was the exception…Financials remained by far the weakest".

18. US Services PMI. "Service providers signaled a sharp fall in business activity [in December] … Output levels declined further amid weak demand conditions and another monthly drop in new orders".

19. End of an era. "From $19 trillion to nothing. The last of the negative yielding debt is gone".

20. AAII. "Everyone hopped into the neutral camp" as both AAII bulls and bears each fall by 5%.

21. Heavy retail selling. The past week was "the third worst week of net selling in history".

22. Corporate insiders (I). "Insider sentiment…has dropped for six consecutive months".

23. Corporate insiders (II). "Tech corporate insider buying is falling off a cliff".

24. Global value spreads. "Despite all the expensive stock carnage, barely a blip on the value spread".

25. Large growth vs value. "The relative performance swings between large cap Growth and Value stock indices have become much more pronounced since 2020. In the decade before, there were no instances of 3 standard deviation differentials. Over the last 3 years, we have had 3 such swings in each direction".

26. Active fund performance. "Globally, only 35% of Active Funds outperformed in 2022".

27. Small-cap value performance. "98% of small-cap value managers outperformed the Russell 2000 in 2022".

28. Small-caps vs. CPI. "The Russell 2,000 small-cap index tends to outperform when inflation is falling".

29. S&P vs. VIX. And finally, “in 2022, when VIX > 28.5, S&P gained 15%. When VIX < 28.5, S&P 500 lost 30%”.

Thanks for reading!