Sethi Associates

 US Philadelphia Fed Mfg Business Outlook Jan 26.5 (est 11.8; prevR 9.1; prev 11.1) Whoa, very strong Philly Fed mfg with current activity pushing up towards recovery highs, and outlook also improving strongly to 52.8. Responses were 1/11-1/19/21. Here was the intro: Manufacturing activity in the region continued to grow, according to firms responding to the January  Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey . The survey’s current indicators for general activity, new orders, and shipments increased notably this month and remained positive for the eighth consecutive month. The survey’s future indexes remained at high readings and continue to indicate that firms expect growth over the next six months. Specifically, new orders up to 30 from 2, highest in 3 mos, shipments 22.7 from 11.7, employment to 22.5 from 5.5, 7th month of positive numbers, workweek up 3 to 18.6.   Future activity (6 mos out) rose to 52.8 from 43.1, although future new orders, shipments, and employment...

US Housing Starts Jan 1.580 Mln (est 1.658 Mln; prevR 1.680 Mln; prev 1.669 Mln) US Building Permits Jan 1.881 Mln (est 1.678 Mln; prevR 1.704 Mln; prev 1.709 Mln) Beat in permits but miss in starts which was driven by pullback on the single-family side as noted below, so some definite softening in starts last month (but forward indicator permits remains strong, and note that single-family starts and permits both remain up strongly y/y (17.5% and 22.5% respectively) so any talk about this meaning the top is in for homebuilders, etc., is definitely premature). Starts Starts pulled back 6% on a seasonally adjusted basis, and also are are down y/y by 2.3%,  The m/m decline led by single-family which pulled back by 12.2%, but, importantly, these remain up by 17.5% y/y. Multi-family (MF) was up by 16.2% m/m. Y/y though down by -35%. Full breakdown below but NE only region to be up SF with huge cratering in Midwest (weather?). On y/y basis  Permits As noted nice beat from permits dr...

  Initial Jobless Claims : SA -26K to  900K  in-line with consensus, 926K prior (revised from 965K), non-SA -151k to 961k . PUI claims increase 139k to 424k. Four-week moving average for week ending Jan. 16 was 848K , up 23.5K from the previous week's average of 816K. Continuing jobless claims week ending Jan 9th of 5.054M is down from 5.181M and lower than 5.4M consensus. On the one hand nice to see some reversal of that huge increase we saw last week, but on the other hand only got back a portion of last week's jump, as seasonally adjusted 1/2/21 claims had made it down to 784k. Worse, pandemic claims cont to jump (now up 260k in two weeks).  Cont claims, delayed by a week did fall by 127k, and total on benefits, 2 weeks removed, fell by 2.4M as those on pandemic assistance droped by almost 3M the week of 1/2 (most likely due to issues surrounding the expiration of benefits that week). Now that benefits have been extended, as we move into February we'll be able to ...

Daily Summary – January 20, 2021 If you haven't heard by now, according to CFRA the period from the election to yesterday was the best election to inauguration performance in history. But while markets often like to "sell the news", instead today they bought it. But interestingly it wasn't the small caps and value stocks that have led during that period which powered the gains today, but the forgotten large growth stocks.  Notably all of FANGMA, which I had noted last week had done a whole lot of nothing for months, blasted off on the back of NFLX's better than expected earnings report which sent that stock up 17% (honestly, was it really that great?), and pushed the whole group to 2-4% gains. As you might expect, this led to NDX cruising to a 2.31% lead, with Naz following just behind at 1.97% SPX at 1.39% and RUT lagging at a pedestrian 0.44% gain. All set ATH's today. Style box also looks just like you'd expect, although I was a little surprised to see ...

 Daily Summary – January 19, 2021 I ended last Friday's summary with "At some point you'd expect a correction (most do) but as I posited yesterday, maybe we just keep doing this for a while longer." And for today at least, that's exactly what we did with most stocks positive with the right half (growth) of the style box doing the heavy lifting easily outpacing the less growthy portions of the box.  In a change from recent trends there wasn't a huge advantage to small caps versus large overall, with Naz and NDX leading today up around 1.5%, followed by RUT at 1.32% with SPX "lagging" at +0.81%. Nothing really new to note technically. SPX sector flag improved from what we saw the end of last week with 8 green sectors led by energy bouncing back from worst to first, only sector up over 2%. But two others, comm's and tech, were up over 1% led by those growthy stocks. The three red sectors were the three defensive bond proxies - staples, RE and utes a...

  Daily Summary – January 15, 2021 Well, I said if you wanted more market news, you'd get it today, and that we did. I had thought that bank earnings would set the tone, which they sort of did, with that tone being "sell the news" whether it be bank earnings or the newly unveiled Biden stimulus package. Not helping matters was the poor retail sales report before the market opened, but in terms of timing it was just before the weaker than exp'd consumer sentiment report from UofM at 10am when things really got going to the downside with all stocks selling off aggressively led by the small caps that were the weakest overnight as well. While there was some recovery during the day, the result was a relatively ugly day with RUT down 1.5%, while Naz, NDX, and SPX all down in the seven to eight tenths range. If there was a place to hide it would have been in the upper right of the box (larger and growthier) but even that was red. With today's action, the SPX has now gain...

- US Industrial Production Dec: 1.6% (est 0.5%, prev 0.4%) - US Capacity Utilization Dec: 74.5% (est 73.6%, prev 73.3%) - US Manufacturing Production Dec: 0.9% (est 0.5%, prev 0.8%) Industrial production and cap utilization both beat estimates and improved for a third month in a row despite the increasing restrictions, etc.  Very good to see cont'd recovery here  Both pushed up to a recovery highs although IP remains down 3.6% y/y, cap utilization a more mild -0.2%.  In IP, m/m gains across the board with consumer goods up 1.6%, biz equip 0.6, constr 1.9, and materials up 1.7%. On a y/y basis only consumer goods are up (0.4%), the others are down 7.1, 1.6, and 4.9% respectively. Looking from industry group perspective, mfg was up 0.9%, mining 1.6%, and utes 6.2%. Of these only utes are up y/y (2.7%) while the other two are down 2.8 and 12.3% respectively.     From the report - Durable goods other than motor vehicles and parts rose 1.5 percent, and nond...