Daily Chartbook #190

Welcome back to Daily Chartbook: the day’s best charts & insights, curated.

1. US petroleum inventories. "Weekly US commercial petroleum inventory data showed another bullish draw across the big-3 but the headline draw was once again blunted by a sizable build in other products."

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2. Strategic Petroluem Reserves. "The Biden admin drew down from the SPR for the 4th straight week."

3. Balance of trade. "US merchandise trade deficit narrowed $7.4bn to $84.6bn in March 23. Goods exports +2.9%, good imports -1.0%."

4. Financial conditions. The NFCI "moved down to –0.30 in the week ending April 21, suggesting financial conditions loosened."

5. Recession indicators. "None of the indicators the NBER recession committee normally looks at suggest that we are in a recession at the moment."

6. Gig economy. "The percentage of [BofA] customers who received income from gig platforms...slipped to around 2.7% in February 2023, from 3.3% in March 2022."

7. Inventories. "March wholesale inventories (blue) +0.1% m/m vs. +0.1% est. & +0.1% prior … retail inventories (orange) +0.7% vs. +0.2% est. & +0.3% prior (rev down from +0.8%)."

8. Durable goods (I). Orders "soared 3.2% MoM rescuing the YoY from dropping negative for the first time since Aug 2020."

9. Durable goods (II). "Core orders (ex-Transports) rose 0.3% MoM (better than the 0.2% drop expected) highlighting that this headline surge was all Boeing - with a 78.4% MoM surge in non-defense aircraft and parts orders."

10. Q1 GDP. The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth in Q1 is now 1.1%, down from 2.5% on April 18. The drop was driven by a downside revision to consumer spending.

11. Bonds vs. Fed. "The bond market is pricing almost 200 bps worth of Fed cuts over the next 18 months. This is by far the biggest amount of cumulative Fed cuts the bond market ever priced in over the last 37 years."

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12. TIPS vs. Fed. "Would the [Federal Reserve] cut rates later this year if market-based (TIPS) measures of future inflation remain over 2%? History says yes, but only if a recession were clearly on the way."

13. 3M vs. 10Y. "There have only been two other periods in the last sixty years that the 3m/10y yield curve flattened by more over the course of a year than it has now (gray shading is recessions)."

14. Gold ETFs. "ETF flows aren’t confirming the gold rally yet."

15. Gold vs. oil. "The gold-to-oil ratio suggests commodities traders are hedging against the risk of a US recession."

16. Margin debt. "Typically, an increase in margin debt can be viewed as a bullish signal for the S&P 500."

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17. Equity inflows. "Investors bought US stocks for the first time in a month last week" with hedge funds leading $2.3 billion in inflows over the period.

18. Smart money. "Smart money confidence has been dropping like a stone."

19. Systematic positioning (I). Systematic positioning in global stocks is at its highest since early 2022 after $170 billion in equity buying over the past month…"Quant funds would be forced to unwind as much as $276 billion of shares should the market sell off in the next month."

20. Systematic positioning (II). "Systematic [US] equity positioning is the longest it's been in over a year according to estimates by Goldman Sachs."

21. ETF flows. "BofA private clients have been getting back into financials and dumping REITs."

22. Sector short interest. "One-month changes in short interest by sector."

23. Buybacks. "US share buyback authorization announcements remain strong."

24. SPX concentration. "Just five stocks make up 21% of S&P 500 market capitalization."

25. Earnings vs. revenues. "According to historical data, changes in EPS tend to precede changes in top-line growth by approximately one quarter. Recent reports indicate that corporate profits have fallen by 13%."

26. Nasdaq PE vs. real yield. "Nasdaq valuation has already priced in significant drop in real yields...real yields will only go down in a recession, which will impact E in PE."

27. NDX breadth. And finally, “Nasdaq breadth defined in this case by the advance/decline ratio, just hit a record low.”

Thanks for reading!