Oct 9, 2023
Being Columbus Day, the stock market is open, but bond markets are shuttered for the Federal holiday. As we noted in today’s Morning Lineup, to get a read on the moves in Treasuries we can resort to ETFs like the iShares 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TLT). The ETF has gotten pummeled over the past several months, but on the geopolitical news of the weekend, TLT is putting at least a small dent into recent losses. As of this writing, TLT is up 1.4% today which puts it on pace for the best day since August 23rd. Not only that, but if the gains hold throughout the rest of the day, it would be TLT’s best Columbus Day since the ETF began trading 20 years ago. That follows last year’s 1.55% Columbus Day decline for TLT which was the worst performance on the holiday since the ETF’s inception.
Overall, TLT’s performance on Columbus Day has historically seen mixed returns with an average decline of 6 bps on trading volume that has been well below average. Since its inception in 2002, volume in TLT has never been above its 200-DMA on Columbus Day, and in more than half of all years volume has been less than half of its daily average
For equities, the trend is similar. Since 2002, median Columbus Day volume has been 57% of the 200-DMA while the median daily gain on the day was eight basis points. There have also only been five years when volume was above average. One of those years was 2008 when the ETF surged 14.52% on beliefs that the worst of the financial crisis was in the rearview. To this day, Columbus Day 2008 remains the sixth-largest single-day gain in the S&P 500’s entire history dating back nearly a century.
Oct 5, 2023
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Looking for deeper insight into markets? In tonight’s Closer sent to Bespoke Institutional clients, we begin with a look at money market flows (page 1) followed by a rundown of the Consumer Staples sector (page 2). We then dive into the latest trade balance data (page 3) before closing out with a look at the latest housing inventories data (pages 4 and 5).
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Oct 5, 2023
Following up on a disappointing ADP employment number yesterday, today’s release of weekly jobless claims also indicated a modest deterioration in labor market data. Seasonally adjusted initial claims have risen in back-to-back weeks up to 207K. On the bright side, that was below expectations and is only a minor increase as claims remain below their range from throughout the spring and summer this year. Additionally, in the low 200K range, claims are still at a historically healthy level.
Before seasonal adjustment, claims were actually lower at 172.78K. In one sense, that lower reading is not exactly surprising as week-over-week declines have been observed roughly 70% of the time historically in the current week of the year. However, what is now more unusual is that it sets a new low on the year. As we have frequently noted in recent weeks, this time of year typically sees claims put in an annual low, but the new low this week is a bit later than normal. In fact, outside of the pandemic years (2020 and 2021) when claims were historically volatile, the last time an annual low occurred this late in the year was 2014. Prior to that, 1967, 1980, 2000, and 2011 were the only other years with an annual low in the 39th week or later. In other words, claims have remained strong, and seasonal headwinds haven’t yet seemed to come into play in any impactful way.
Like initial claims, seasonally adjusted continuing claims came in stronger than expected at 1.664 million. That is a tiny drop from 1.665 million the previous week but is still off of the low of 1.658 million from two weeks prior. In all, that leaves claims at historically strong levels with a modest multi-month downtrend still in place.
