Daily Chartbook #73

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

1. Home sales (I). Pending home sales fell 10.2% in September, the biggest drop since April 2020.

2. Home sales (II). "That dropped the pending home sales index to its lowest since 2010 (ex the trough of the COVID lockdowns crisis)".

3. Housing market conditions. For buyers and sellers.

4. Hawkish Fed. The "latest [Bloomberg survey of economists] shows Fed will maintain its hawkish stance next week, raising the prospects of US and global recessions".

5. Too hawkish? "75% of economists said there’s a greater risk that the Fed will raise rates too much & cause unnecessary pain as opposed to not raising enough & failing to contain inflation".

6. Employment Cost Index. The ECI dropped to 1.2% from 1.3% quarter-to-quarter (in line with expectations) while wages and benefits increased 1.3% and 1%, respectively.

7. Wages. Wages for private workers (blue) are now up 8.1% YoY, the lowest since March 2021.

8. Personal income & spending (I). Personal income and spending increased 0.4% and 0.6% respectively.

9. Personal income & spending (II). "On a YoY notional basis, spending continues to outpace income growth significantly, but both are slowing".

10. Personal saving (I). "The savings rate plunged to multi-decade lows at 3.1%, just shy of the record low 3.0%".

11. Personal saving (II). "Households saved about $2.2T during the initial pandemic and pandemic stimulus. Have spent out $0.7T of that maintaining consumption in the face of flat/declining real incomes. Still leaves about $1.5T--which could easily last a year".

12. PCE (I). Monthly headline and core PCE rose by 0.3% and 0.5% respectively.

13. PCE (II). PCE YoY change in topline contributions.

14. PCE (III). The same, but for top 5 subcomponent contributions.

15. EM inflows. Emerging market equities just saw their largest inflows since April.

16. Resilient investor flows. Cumulative investor flows into equities and government bonds remain strong.

17. De-grossing. "Hedge funds have been busy de-grossing aggressively lately, primarily driven by short covers and lesser because of long sales".

18. Bond inflows. Massive inflow to bonds from BofA private clients of late.

19. Bond positioning. “Positioning as proxied by JPM US Treasury client survey”.

20. No more risk-free returns. "Long-term returns for US Treasuries at 50-year lows".

21. Record buyback authorizations. US share buybacks are being authorized at a record rate this year.

22. Record buybacks. "Corporates are on pace to repurchase over $1.1T of U.S. stocks this year which will go down as the most in the history of the stock market".

23. Big Tech vs. S&P 495. "The divergence between market-weighted and equal-weighted indexes is entering silly territory".

24. Wide sector dispersion. "2022 looks set to host widest annual spread between best- and worst-performing S&P sectors, ever".

25. Upside > downside. In October, “the average SPX move on ‘up’ days is over 2:1 that of the move magnitude on ‘down days’” and more stocks are participating in moves to the upside vs. downside.

26. Q3 earnings (I). Stock price reactions to Q3 beats and misses (after 40% of S&P 500 reported).

27. Q3 earnings (II). With 52% of the S&P 500 having reported, 71% beat EPS and 68% beat revenue estimates. Blended earnings growth of 2.2% (-5.1% excluding energy) is the lowest since Q3 2020.

28. Q3 earnings (III). “71% of [S&P 500] companies have beaten EPS estimates to date for Q3, which is below the 5-year average of 77% and below the 10-year average of 73%”.

29. Q3 earnings (IV). “68% of [S&P 500] companies have beaten revenue estimates to date for Q3, which is below the 5-year average of 69% but above the 10-year average of 62%”.

30. Earnings outlook (I). Expected earnings growth for CY 2022 is 6.1%. "For CY 2023, analysts are projecting earnings growth of 6.4%, down from 8.1% on Sept 30".

31. Earnings outlook (II). And finally, "the forward "Es" are coming down".

Have a great weekend!