Mar 30, 2023
The S&P 500 has made a press back up towards the high end of the past month’s range this week, but sentiment has yet to reflect the moves higher in price. The past several weeks have seen the AAII sentiment survey come in a relatively tight range between the high of 24.8% on March 9th and a low of 19.2% the following week. That is in spite of the recent updates to monetary policy and turbulence in the banking industry. Today’s reading was smack dab in the middle of that recent range at 22.5%.
Given there have not been any major developments with regard to sentiment, the record streak of below-average (37.55%) bullish sentiment readings has grown to 71 weeks.
While bullish sentiment was modestly higher this week rising 1.6 percentage points, bearish sentiment shed 3.3 percentage points to fall to 45.6%. That is only the lowest reading in three weeks as bearish sentiment has sat above 40% for all of March.
The predominant sentiment reading continues to be bearish. The bull-bear spread has been negative for six weeks in a row following the end of the record streak of negative readings in the bull-bear spread in February.
Taking into account other sentiment surveys, the AAII reading stands out as far more pessimistic at the moment. In the chart below, we show the readings of the AAII bull-bear spread paired with the same spread in the Investors Intelligence survey and the NAAIM Exposure index. Whereas the latter two surveys have basically seen readings return back to their historical averages, the AAII survey sits 1.6 standard deviations below its historical average. In other words, overall sentiment might not be as pessimistic as the AAII survey would imply.
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Mar 30, 2023
Initial jobless claims took a step higher this week rising by 7K to 198K. With last week’s number also going unrevised, claims have now been below 200K for 10 of the last 11 weeks. That being said, this week’s reading was the highest since the 212K print in the first week of March.
Before seasonal adjustment, claims were once again higher rising by over 10K week over week to 223K. Although that is not a concerningly high reading nor is it a large jump, the increase was peculiar in that it went against expected seasonal patterns. Prior to this year, jobless claims have only risen week over week in the current week of the year 16% of the time; the most recent instance prior to 2020 (right as claims surged at the onset of the pandemic) was in 2017.
Although initial jobless claims modestly deteriorated, it has not exactly been a worrying increase as claims remain at historically healthy levels. The same goes for continuing claims. This week saw continuing claims rise by a modest 4K to 1.689 million. That is only the highest level since the end of February when claims totaled over 1.7 million.
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Our daily research consists of a pre-market note, a post-market note, and our Chart of the Day. These three daily reports are supplemented with additional research pieces covering ETFs and asset allocation trends, global macro analysis, earnings and conference call analysis, market breadth and internals, economic indicator databases, growth and dividend income stock baskets, and unique interactive trading tools.
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Mar 29, 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 various monetary policy scenarios based on market pricing (page 1). We then dive into today’s pending home sales numbers (page 2) followed by a look at the latest quarterly CFO data (page 3). Next, we recap this week’s EIA data (page 4) and the 7 year note auction (page 5).
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Mar 28, 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 today’s Consumer Confidence numbers (page 1) followed by an update of our Five Fed composite (pages 2 and 3). We then check in on 2022 energy usage (page 4). Next, we pivot over to a number of housing releases including those from Apartment List, Zillow, Case-Shiller, and the New York Fed (pages 5 and 6) before closing out with a recap of the 5 year note auction (page 7).
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