Keeping in mind sentiment data is contrarian in nature and most predictive at its extremes, today's American Association of Individual Investors Sentiment Survey report shows bullish sentiment increased over seven percentage points to 36.36%. The plus and minus one standard deviation levels for the bullishness reading are 48% and 28%, respectively. Although the bullishness reading jumped higher in...

Further evidence of a tight labor market is seen in today's decline in weekly jobless claims to 213,000. This was the first decline in the last three weeks and the 4-week moving average of initial claims continues its trend lower. This report coincides with Tuesday's JOLT report that shows job openings continue to exceed job hires as well. Jobs are plentiful at the moment.

Today's June Job Openings and Labor Turnover report once again shows job openings exceed the number of hires for the month by 1.0 million. This continued trend higher in openings versus hires is a sign employers continue to have difficulty filling open positions.Additionally, again in June, job openings continue to exceed the number individuals looking for employment. Openings increased to 6.662 m...

It seems one key focus of recent commentary has been the buyback activity by companies due to the cash flow benefit resulting from the tax cuts passed late last year.I have commented on the fact that the increased buyback activity could provide some support for the market and that may well be the case. What has not occurred though is broad outperformance in companies that are instituting buybacks....

François Trahan, Co-Head of Portfolio Strategy at Cornerstone Macro, and named #1 in portfolio strategy in 8 out of the last 10 years by Institutional Investors Magazine, recently sat down for an interview with Consuelo Mack on WealthTrack. Whether one agrees or disagrees with his perspective, it is important insight to include in one's evaluation of the market. Much of François' investment thesis...

It seems as though I have written a dozen or more articles on the value versus growth style during the current economic cycle. The extent to which growth has dominated has certainly been a little surprising. For most of the the equity market's upward move since the bottom of the financial crisis, the growth style of investment has dominated as seen in the below chart.In looking at a shorter time p...

Just returned from a week vacation on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and attempting to catch up on market events from last week as I stayed relatively disconnected from technology. The family drove from Ohio to the Outer Banks and if the traffic on the way there, as well as activity on OBX has any economic significance, the economy is strong.Confirming this strength were a few economic reports ...

One could certainly say the current economic expansion is long in the tooth, i.e., second longest on record. As we also wrote in our summer Investor Letter, the headlines on news reports seem a lot worse than reality. Personally, I stopped tuning into the daily television business shows not too long ago as news headlines seem disconnected from actual economic and business results. Simply looking a...

If there is one takeaway from today's advanced retail sales report it is the consumer continues to buy. On a year over year basis total retail sales increased 6.6% as of the end of June. For the month, the actual increase was .5% and met consensus expectations. A large positive in the report was the .5% revision higher in May's .8% increase to a 1.3% increase. In Econoday's release covering the re...

From time to time I review the top 10 stocks that are attracting the interest of members of Better Investing (BI). BI reports the information based on a review of transactions from the company's club accounting website as well as separate member transaction reports. The list has become a little less technology dominated since my last report in March this year. The FANG's ex Alphabet (GOOGL) contin...