Morning Briefing
China exports drop more than expected in August
China’s exports fell 1% (in  dollars) in August, China's customs administration announced on Sunday. Economists and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted that exports would increase by 2.2% . Imports dropped by 5.6% roughly in line with forecasts of a 6.4%...
August jobs report disappoints; more evidence that U.S. economy is slowing
The U.S. economy added 130,000 jobs in August. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected 171,000 new jobs. Once you subtracted the 25,000 new temporary jobs added by the government for the 2020 census, the results were even more disappointing with the private...
Flood of corporate debt sends Treasuries prices tumbling
Companies are set to borrow $74 billion in the investment-grade bond market this week. That's the most for a week since records began in 1972. The issuers include Coca-Cola (KO), Walt Disney (DIS), and Apple (AAPL). At least another $50 billion in corporate bond...
The market wants to believe today–rallying ahead of the Fed?
As of 2 p.m. New York time U.S. stocks were higher on just about no meaningful news. To me it looks like the market wants to climb in the very near term--testing technical momentum to move to 2950 on the Standard & Poor's 500 and maybe beyond. The "reasons" being...
Another index shows U.S. manufacturing in contraction
The Institute for Supply Management's Purchasing Managers Index fell to 49.1 in August, according to data released this morning. That was below all the forecasts of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. In this survey anything below 50 indicates that a sector is...
I wish today’s gains were more convincing
Solid gains for U.S. stocks today, August 29. The Standard & Poor's 500 closed up 1.27%; the Dow Jones Industrial Average ahead 1.25; and the NASDAQ Composite gained 1.48%. But the lost some steam at the end of the day. But this was a low volume day ahead of a...
Recession expectations slowly climbing–slowly driving odds of a recession higher
Recessions have a huge "sentiment" component in their causation. Consumers and CEOs look around at the economy, assess their feelings about the future economy, and decide that the prudent course is to cut back on spending to prepare for the coming economic downturn....
Markets try to have it both ways in the morning and then throw in the towel on risk
This morning you could hear the gears whirring as Wall Street strategists tried to position their portfolios so they were hedged against U.S-China trade war risk but also positioned to catch any bounce on good news on the trade front and ahead of the September 18...
It looks like the week will start off with a test of August lows–again
The Standard & Poor's 500 has twice bounced back from big drops in August. Back in the first few days of the month, the index fell to 2,844--before bouncing back 3.3% in the next three sessions. A week later the index fell to 2,840 and then bounced back strongly....
China retaliates; Trump promises his retaliation to their retaliation this afternoon
Xi Jinping and Donald Trump upstaged Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell this morning. Powell's Jackson Hole speech this morning was supposed to be the day's big market event. (More on this speech in a later post.) But this morning China announced that it would...
Tomorrow’s opening speech by Powell at Jackson Hole central bank gabfest gets more and more interesting
The financial markets aren't backing off. They're pricing in high odds of another 65 basis points to 75 basis points in interest rate cuts by the end of 2019. That means a 25 or 50 basis point cut at the September 18 meeting followed by another 25 to 50 basis point...Jim’s Stock Alerts
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