Succinct Summations for the week ending August 21st
Positives:
1. Housing starts came in at 1.21mm, up from 1.2 and better than the 1.185 expected.
2. Philly Fed came in at 8.3, up from 5.7 and better than the 6 expected.
3. Mortgage rates fell to another multi month low at 4.11%,
4. Refinance applications rose 7.2% and are up 21.2% y/o/y.
5. Japanese exports rose 7.6% y/o/y.
Negatives:
1. Rough week for stocks, with the S&P 500 posting its largest 5-day decline since November 2011.
2. FOMC minutes from July reflect a divided committee leaning towards an increase this year, in September or December.
3. Not a whiff of inflation, CPI and core CPI rose just 0.1%.
4. Markit US manufacturing fell to 52.9, the lowest reading since October 2013.
5. Empire manufacturing fell to -14.9 vs expectations of +3.9.
Spike in margin clerk hiring.
Cuts both ways
I’m surprised there’s no mention in the negative portion about China’s poor data. I tuned in to Fox Business News and heard a guest theorizing The Fed will soon engage in QE 4.
I’m very interested to see how your articles on “lessons of -self-” and “the enemy within” are going to pan out! Does a 5 – 10% drop in the market make everyone go for the “Sell! Sell!”-moment? Or will the medium term diversified strategy hold? Time will tell ….
I have to admit that as I prepared my re-balancing orders yesterday, I inadvertently blew all the large cap into the money market. Now I’m afraid that the FED will say something soothing and the market will rally. Well, I have no one to blame but myself. I was all steeled to ride it out. Or was it a subconscious slip? Now I can’t even trust myself!