WealthTrack's Consuelo Mack is in the midst of conducting her annual year end interview with Ed Hyman, Vice Chairman of Evercore and this year, Matthew McLennan of First Eagle Investment Management. Part I of the interview below focuses on the U.S. with a later Part 2 interview focusing on the international outlook. As noted by WealthTrack, "Ed Hyman is the Founder and Chairman of its Evercore ISI...
Buybacks for companies in the S&P 500 Index turned higher in the third quarter to $175.89 billion after declining from a peak of $222.98 billion in Q4 2018 as represented by the red line in the below chart. With a resumption of higher buybacks, the total of dividend and buybacks increased in Q3 to $299.01 billion versus $284.14 billion in Q2 2019. Quarterly totals for dividend payments consistentl...
Today's AAII release of the Sentiment Survey reported a 6.5 percentage point jump in individual investor bullishness. This increase came mostly from the bearish category as it declined 5.6 percentage poitns. With the bullishness reading now reported at 44.1%, this is above the long term bullish average of 38.0%. The plus one standard deviation above the average is 48% so individual investors are a...
The October Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) released today reported a 235,000 increase in job openings to 7.3 million. The survey continues to show the economy is functioning at a level with more job openings than unemployed individuals. This can be seen in the following two charts with the first one showing only .81 unemployed workers available per job opening. The second chart sho...
Investors positioned for higher stock and bond prices during the year have not been disappointed. With the Federal Reserve pursuing a lower interest rate policy, bond yields declined for most of the year with a commensurate increase in bond prices. Stock prices have mostly trended higher as well with some of the price increase a recovery from last year's fourth quarter selloff. Returns across most...
According to the November release of the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index, small businesses have a favorable view on economic growth. The index rose 2.3 points in November to 104.7, the largest monthly increase since May 2018. There was not much to not like in the report as 10 of the seven index components rose.Highlights from the report include:"The NFIB Uncertainty Index fell 6 points in Novem...
Over the course of the equity rally this year, periodically I have noted the significant level of outflows from equity mutual funds and ETFs. Commensurate with these outflows has been the significant inflows into bond mutual funds and ETFs and money market mutual funds. The Investment Company Institute (ICI) is one organization that tracks fund and ETF flows and for the week ending November 26, 20...
There can be a number of reason for an investor wanting to have an allocation to Gold. One reason for owning Gold is it tends to serve as a safe haven asset and perform well in an environment where economic activity is slowing. On the other hand investors might look to Copper as an investment if they expect a pickup in economic activity as it tends to rise with a growing economy. As noted in a rec...
One potential consequence of an economy that is growing at a slow pace is the higher likelihood that reported economic data has a tendency to conflict with some of the other economic reports. An example of this is the report on manufacturing activity today. Both the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) and Markit reported November Purchasing Manager Index data with the ISM PMI report coming in at...
One difficulty for investors in the U.S. market at the moment is the fact it seems to be hitting new highs on what seems like a daily basis. What gets missed by investors though is a market reaching new highs is actually a bullish signal and tends to be a precursor to additional highs. Below is a chart of the S&P 500 Index provided by The Kirk Report and the red dots show instances where the marke...