The chart below shows the size of securities held outright by the US Federal Reserve versus Wilshire Total market index as stock market proxy. We see the various quantitative easing programs that propelled the stock market higher including the massive Covid19 liquidity injection that set stocks on a never-before-seen trajectory On the surface it appears that when the size of the FED balance sheet is flat or shrinking (tapering) stock returns are either muted/volatile or negative. Similarly when the balance […]

Since the onset of Covid-19, there has been a lot of research (and release) of alternative (non traditional) high-frequency data to measure the extent of the economic collapse brought on by coronavirus lockdowns, as well as to measure the post-lockdown economic recovery. Think of Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and SafeGraph geolocation data to track movement of people around workplaces and residential places, foot and transit traffic data, hotel occupancy, movie ticket sales (BoxOfficeMojo), TSA traveler throughput, seated diners (OpenTable) and so forth. We […]

One of the most accurate and reliable leading indicators we have discovered for the U.S daily new Coronavirus infections curve is the percentage of 52 US states that have an increasing or decreasing rate of new daily infections being reported. This indicator tops out before the national US infection tally and likewise bottoms before the national US infection tally. It is thus an early warning indicator for change in direction of the daily new infections curve. The percentage of US […]

After hundreds of client Zoom consultations over the last 6 months, the request for a fundamentally-driven macro-risk model for cryptocurrency (specifically Bitcoin), similar to the ones we provide for the US economy and SP500, was one of the many topics topics among just under 49% of the calls. The request was highest among high net-worth private investors, family offices and small funds, but we expect company treasurers and larger institutions to become more formally involved with Bitcoin as a possible […]

The SP500 has put in a 7.4% peak-to-trough correction since 12 October. In the last 20 years, according to our SP500 probability model, corrections of more than this magnitude have occurred only 11.4% of the time, hinting at a 88.6% probability the worst is over. The SP500 has also put in lower weekly closes 3 weeks in a row. Additional lower weekly closes have only occurred 15.9% of the time in the past, implying a 84.1% probability the worst is […]

For a while, it seemed we had tamed the coronavirus epidemic in the US. But new daily cases are on the 3rd surge since the epidemic hit US shores: The U.S lags most of Europe’s ‘  countries by about 4-6 weeks on the coronavirus curve. When we saw the infections picking up in Europe after lockdowns had been eased, we wondered if the US might be able to dodge a bullet, but sadly it appears a new wave of infections […]

In this exercise, we examine the current behavior of various of our US leading economic indexes to past history to determine a likely recession exit date. The charts we display below are automatically displayed (depending on your selections) in the monthly data file Analysis Tool that is published for PRO subscribers, and can be found in the new RECOVERY sheet in the Excel workbook. We start with our oldest and most widely followed index, the Weekly Leading SuperIndex: Let us […]

We wish to highlight the following recent additions and improvements since April 2019, to our subscriber deliverables, as well as highlight some older features you may not be aware of. 1.Alerts archive Many subscribers do not know that you can access a multi-year chronological archive of end-of-day alerts from the REPORTS>ALERTS tab. 2. Stock Market reports The RecessionALERT Valuation Index (RAVI) quarterly report is published in the STOCK MARKET tab, where the Monthly Composite Market Health Index (CMHI) report is […]

NOTE : All the charts displayed below are updated daily/weekly and available for subscribers from the various chart menus. Since the peak daily infection rate of over 75,000 achieved on 17 July 2020, daily infections fell consistently to a trough of just over 20,000 on 8 September 2020. During this period, US national economic mobility (Google workplace less residential mobility indices) climbed slowly as the economy attempted to get back to work. Since just after Labor Day however, the daily […]

Global Business Mobility, defined as GDP-weighted Google geolocation data of workplace less residential mobility for the 24 largest economies in the world, representing over two-thirds of global GDP, remains in decline despite a recent uptick: When excluding USA from the data, the situation appears even worse, as depicted by the second chart above showing steeper decline of business mobility as well as a daily Covid19 infection rate that appears on the rise. This is due to the fact that the […]

The US State and G8 Mobility Charts have just been updated in the Covid menu. The U.S has seen a whopping increase in infections across a broad swathe of states since emerging from lockdown : As a result, US and state economic mobility has taken a huge hit. Although the US is only about 49% of the G8 GDP, there are enough G8 members also taking strain to stall the entire G8 group recovery. Since the G8 represent almost 49% […]