Stocks Post Down Week With Irma, FOMC Approaching

Since topping out in late July and early August, stocks have gyrated sideways to lower, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average finishing the week with a marginal (0.06%) gain Friday, enduring a losing week for all the major indices.

The losses were not great, the NASDAQ taking the brunt of the declines, down 1.17 percent for the week, while the NYSE composite was off just a quarter of a percent.

Facing a FOMC meeting in two weeks (Sept. 19-20) and the aftermath of yet-undetermined damages from hurricane Irma in Florida, Wall Street probably won't need much cheerleading to forge upward since the potential damages from Irma have been wildly overstated and the tone from the Fed continues to be accommodative. What may be worrying will come Thursday morning, when initial unemployment claims are announced prior to the opening bell.

Last week's spike of 62,000 of the 298,000 total, was largely attributable to Hurricane Harvey, as Texans sought government assistance. Similar spikes were seen after major hurricanes Katrina in 2005 and Sandy in 2012. However, the surge may be masking a breakdown in hiring and staffing as the US economy plods its way toward the important holiday season.

Full employment, a mandate of the Federal Reserve, is as close as its going to get, with unemployment nationally being reported at under five percent, historically the level understood to be full employment. Such a level - even if, as the case may be, many of the jobs are part-time - is not sustainable over the long haul. Companies will trim when profits are threatened, as has been the case throughout multiple trips through the business cycle.

Whether the government statisticians will provide true figures of the employment condition is another matter altogether. The Labor Department is congested with assumptions and adjustments which often distort the true picture.

Unless the FOMC goes rogue at their next meeting and actually raises the federal funds rate (highly unlikely), there's little to keep stocks from making a rebound, though it's probably going to be short-lived and thinly traded. The overall trend remains slightly to the downside.

At The Close, 9/8/17:
Dow: 21,797.79, +13.01 (+0.06%)
NASDAQ: 6,360.19, -37.68 (-0.59%)
S&P 500: 2,461.43, -3.67 (-0.15%)
NYSE Composite: 11,887.98, +8.37 (+0.07%)

For the week:
Dow: -189.77 (-0.86%)
NASDAQ: -75.14 (-1.17%)
S&P 500: -15.12 (-0.61%)
NYSE: -30.13 (-0.25%)

Stocks Bounce, Reasons Unknown, 10-Year Note Yield Below Two Percent

Stocks in the US had one of their best days of the new year on Thursday, though it's difficult to put a finger on exactly why that was the case.

Data from durable goods was weak and jobless claims (unemployment) were higher, so there must be an invisible hand (see PPT, for instance) pushing stocks up.

Other oddities on the day were oil gaining to close at 33.72 per barrel and the 10-year note closing below a two percent yield, at 1.985%, which normally would signal a rout in equities.

This is what one gets when markets are endlessly manipulated by government forces and the Federal Reserve.

Trade cautiously.

S&P 500: 1,893.36, +10.41 (0.55%)
Dow: 16,069.64, +125.18 (0.79%)
NASDAQ: 4,506.68, +38.51 (0.86%)

Crude Oil 33.72 +4.40% Gold 1,114.10 -0.15% EUR/USD 1.0940 +0.36% 10-Yr Bond 1.9850 -0.80% Corn 365.75 -0.95% Copper 2.05 -0.53% Silver 14.24 -1.48% Natural Gas 2.22 +3.15% Russell 2000 1,003.27 +0.05% VIX 22.42 -2.99% BATS 1000 20,209.43 +0.62% GBP/USD 1.4356 +0.77% USD/JPY 118.8150 +0.20%

Are We Recovering Enough?

Editor's Note: Money Daily stopped being a daily post blog in March, 2014. Well, it's now March, 2015, and, after a year off, little has changed, but Fearless Rick is once again re-charged to begin making daily (Monday - Friday) posts. This is, with hope, the first of many...

The following list is courtesy of the good squids over at Goldman Sachs.

From the start of February through March 2, these are the misses and beats of various US macro data.

MISSES

1. Personal Spending
2. Construction Spending
3. ISM New York
4. Factory Orders
5. Ward's Domestic Vehicle Sales
6. ADP Employment
7. Challenger Job Cuts
8. Initial Jobless Claims
9. Nonfarm Productivity
10. Trade Balance
11. Unemployment Rate
12. Labor Market Conditions Index
13. NFIB Small Business Optimism
14. Wholesale Inventories
15. Wholesale Sales
16. IBD Economic Optimism
17. Mortgage Apps
18. Retail Sales
19. Bloomberg Consumer Comfort
20. Business Inventories
21. UMich Consumer Sentiment
22. Empire Manufacturing
23. NAHB Homebuilder Confidence
24. Housing Starts
25. Building Permits
26. PPI
27. Industrial Production
28. Capacity Utilization
29. Manufacturing Production
30. Dallas Fed
31. Chicago Fed NAI
32. Existing Home Sales
33. Consumer Confidence
34. Richmond Fed
35. Personal Consumption
36. ISM Milwaukee
37. Chicago PMI
38. Pending Home Sales
39. Personal Income
40. Personal Spending
41. Construction Spending
42. ISM Manufacturing

BEATS

1. Markit Services PMI
2. Nonfarm Payrolls
3. JOLTS
4. Case-Shiller Home Price
5. Q4 GDP Revision (but notably lower)
6. Markit Manufacturing PMI

OK, so the US economy is going backwards at a 7:1 ratio of Misses to Beats, but stocks, since the beginning of February, have been roaring (today excluded).

The point is that stocks are ignoring the somber truth that the US economy is running on fumes and Wall Street is running on pretty much less than nothing (kinda like the motto for the NY Lottery - a dollar and a dream).

There are collapsing scenarios unfolding everywhere, from the disgusting behavior of executives at Lumber Liquidators (LL), who were exposed on 60 Minutes this past Sunday. There, the CEO says he didn't now that the below-cost flooring coming out of China didn't meet California (and much of the rest of the US states) standards for toxic emissions, especially formaldehyde. Sad fact is that after being punched down on Monday, the stock rallied more than 5% on Tuesday, but, worry not, it was at nearly 70 about a week ago, and was punished well before the TV coverage, down to around 40 now. Somebody knew something and obviously was front-running. Nothing new there, move along...

The award for most disgusting public display over the past few days is split between three distinct candidates:

• 1. The US congress, for cheering on the speech of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a joint meeting.
• 2. The utter stupidity of millions on Twitter over whether some dress was white and gold or blue and black. Hasn't anyone ever heard of distortion?
• 3. The cops who shot the homeless guy in Los Angeles.

Like I said at the outset, not much has changed over the past year (or five years, for that matter). We're still kicking the can down the road, entrapped in a senseless bout of normalcy bias which is allowing the elite segment of society (Wall Street and DC, mostly) to trample on our freedoms and steal every last cent from the middle and lower classes, along with every shred of dignity.

Yep, like I said when I stopped writing daily diatribes a year ago, nothing is going to change until the Fed stops pumping money into the system. Well, they actually did stop, in the third quarter of last year, but the QE baton was quickly raised by Japan, and will shortly be taken up by the ECB, so, don't expect much to change any time soon. We've got at least a year and a half before the federal funds rate (you know, that one that seems to be permanently stuck between 0 and 0.25%, the rate at which the TBTF banks borrow) gets anywhere close to one percent, and even that could cause a panic in stocks.

In the meantime, the Baby Boomers are trying to figure out how to retire without any interest income, and that's an increasingly difficult trick, since the only reasonable yield one can get is at the far end of the curve, in 30-year bonds, currently hovering around 2.75%. $100,000 invested at that rate returns a whopping $2750 a year, so, you have to put up (and tie up) a million bucks just to live barely above the poverty level. Not much fun when you're 70 years old.

Deflation... it's what's for dinner (after the cat food).

Dow: 18,203.37, -85.26 (-0.47%)
S&P 500: 2,107.78, -9.61 (-0.45%)
Nasdaq 4,979.90, -28.20 (-0.56%)

More tomorrow...