Daily Chartbook #310

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1. Pending home sales. "Pending home sales [unexpectedly] rose 1.1% MoM (best since Jan 2023), pushing sales up to -13.1% YoY (the smallest decline since May 2022)."

2. New listings. "New listings have posted their first annual increase since July 2022," albeit a small one at +0.3%. At this time last year, new listings were falling fast.

3. Active listings. The number of active listings saw its smallest decline since July and is at its highest level since February.

4. List price vs. Sales price. Sellers are lowering prices to meet buyers' bids.

5. Mortgage delinquencies. "The share of U.S. borrowers who were in serious mortgage delinquency (90 days or more late on payments) dropped to 0.9% in August, the lowest recorded since January 1999."

See:

6. US freight. "Larger fleets are parking trucks, not making an effort to fill empty trucks while they ride out a weak market...This will create an incremental capacity buffer once demand returns."

7. Jobless claims. Initial claims rose to from 200k to 210k (vs. 208k est) and remain relatively low. Continuing claims, meanwhile, have risen to the highest since mid-May at 1.79 million (vs. 1.74 million est).

8. Durable goods. Durable goods orders jumped by 4.7% MoM in September (vs. +1.7% est), the strongest reading since July 2020, to +6% YoY. Capital goods orders ex-defense (proxy for business spending) rose by 0.6% (vs. +0.1% est).

9. Fed vs. GDP. "Although their impact on the level of GDP will continue to build (relative to what it would have been in a world where the Fed did not hike rates), we have already passed the point of maximum pain in terms of economic growth (which is what markets care about)."

10. Q3 GDP. At 4.9% annualized, Q3 was the "strongest economic growth (outside of 2020-2021) in nine years. Consumer spending was the primary driver. Housing market investment is finally adding to growth."

11. Price Index. "Core PCE - Feds benchmark inflation indicator- edges down to 2.4%," the lowest reading since Q4 2020.

12. Consumer spending. "Personal consumption increased by 4% (q/q ann.) in 3Q23, up from +0.8% in prior quarter … strongest quarter since 4Q21."

13. Investor cash levels. "Cash levels remain very elevated across investor categories."

14. Investor positioning. "Equity positioning is now below the long-term average for most investor categories...Last month saw most type of investors cutting equity positioning and flying to safe havens."

15. Retail sentiment (I). "Investor increasingly bearish a net % of [AAII] investors with a bearish sentiment fell into the 85th percentile."

16. Retail sentiment (II). Retail call option buying "has been falling and remains low. Meanwhile, equity purchase momentum...has stalled recently, suggesting retail investors are not rushing to buy the dip."

17. Active managers. NAAIM Equity Exposure Index plunged from 66.7 to 24.8, the lowest level in over a year.

18. Investor advisor sentiment. The Investor Intelligence Bull/Bear Ratio fell to 2.06 from 2.32 over the past week.

19. Flows vs. EPS, PMI. "Equity flows tend to move in sync with earnings, and PMI. So as long as both stay ok, we would not expect to see an exodus from equities into bonds."

20. Flows vs. EPS momentum. "Earnings momentum is still holding up thus far, which has prevented the great rotation away from equities into bonds."

21. VIX seasonality. "The recent spike in Vix...looks fairly consistent with the seasonal patterns, so if history repeats itself, volatility should stabilise into year-end."

22. Factor performance. "Defensive factors such as Low Vol, Quality, Value, and Dividends have led the way thus far in October. Investors are still cautious despite resilient econ data."

23. Dividend payers vs. non-payers. "This is the boldest outperformance by stocks who pay a 0% dividend since the data commenced in 1927. If we get a mean reversion of any magnitude on this thing, you can say goodnight to the growth-at-any-price framework that is so commonly embraced."

24. Small-cap drought. "Nearing 500 days since the small-cap Russell 2000 last made a 52-week high. That's closing in on the worst drought in the index's history."

25. SPX breadth. The percentage of S&P 500 stocks above their 200SMA is at its lowest in a year.

26. Cap- vs. equal-weight. "S&P’s cap-weighted index is outperforming its equal-weighted index by 13% ytd .. the widest margin of outperformance (through this point in the year) in 30+ years. The recent price action in supercap tech .. is telling us to brace for some convergence here."

27. Average stock valuation. "The average S&P 500 stock valuation (S&P 500 equal weight index) is now well below the pre-COVID average."

28. P/E: Small- vs. large-cap. "Small Caps almost as cheap as the depths of the 2020 covid crash."

See: ,

29. Earnings misses. "On average, stocks that beat have performed broadly in line with the market; however, a few of the stocks that missed underperformed by >4pp, the most in five quarters."

30. Earnings breakdown. And finally, “for the 29% of S&P 500 companies that have reported third quarter results so far, earnings are up +11% .. but without the contributions of the ‘Magnificent 7’ stocks, index EPS growth would drop to -8.6%.”

Thanks for reading!