Inflation data has overtaken jobs data as the economic indicator that seems to generate the most interest every month and next week’s CPI report will be no different. But seeing inflation just from a post-COVID perspective misses the point. It’s not about prices for used cars or gasoline or shipping containers. Those might be in the headlines but they aren’t the news. The match was struck when the Fed was cutting rates in H2 2019 with wage growth and median CPI inflation at their highest levels in a decade and more job openings than unemployed workers for the first time ever. That reality got lost during the COVID shut-down & re-opening. All the stimulus that followed was fuel for the fire. The Fed made a policy error in 2019. The Fed compounded that error by mis-reading the situation and remaining complacent through 2021. All that being said, we may very well be nearing peak inflation. Inflation needs to stop going up before it can start going down. But it having stopped going up doesn’t mean that it has started going down in a meaningful way.
We've been keeping a keen eye on Uranian stocks over the past few weeks. Throughout the recent broader market weakness, it became a common refrain in our internal analyst meetings: "...we're still seeing relative strength in Uranium stocks."
When we keep saying that over and over, maybe the market is trying to tell us something? *slaps head*
The stock that seems the strongest to us in the sector has been showing signs this week that it's ready to break out. So let's get to work.
We held our September Monthly Strategy Session Tuesday night. Premium Members can click here to watch the recording and review the chartbook.
Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.
By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends.
This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.
With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.
After Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks this morning, the market is pricing in an 86% chance of a 75-basis-point hike later this month.
Meanwhile, rates continue to accelerate at the short end of the curve. That’s been the story for months now.
But will the middle and long end of the curve head higher as well?
According to the two-year US Treasury yield, the answer is a resounding "yes!"
Short-duration rates offer plenty of valuable, leading information regarding US Treasury yields.
We’ve leaned on the five-year yield throughout the current cycle as an early indication of the direction of the 10- and 30-year. It’s proved a beneficial practice.
Today, we’re going to drop it down a notch, extending the same logic to the two-year yield.
Here’s a quad-pane chart of the two-, five-, 10-, and 30-year US Treasury yields:
Starting in the upper-left corner, the two-year is well above its former 2018 highs and hitting levels not seen since November 2007...
This All Star Charts +Plus Monthly Playbook breaks down the investment universe into a series of largely binary decisions and tactical calls. Paired with our Weight of the Evidence Dashboard and our Playbook Chartbook, this piece is designed to help active asset allocators follow trends, pursue opportunities, and manage risk.
In Focus for September: That there is little appetite for risk among investors has been evident all year. Despite bounces in March and May and even during the rally from mid-June to mid-August, our longer-term risk indicator has remained in the Risk Off zone. The challenge from an asset allocation perspective is that while Risk Off assets have been generally stronger than Risk On assets, there is not a lot of strength there on an absolute basis. Our Risk Off - Risk On Range-O-Meter captures this. That the components of our US Risk On Index (shown below in green) have weakened and are nearing their 52-week lows probably comes as no surprise. While...