It’s been a hot time for stocks in Brazil over the last several days.  The country’s benchmark Ibovespa index broke out above its highs from early this year completing a cup and handle formation and hasn’t looked back since.  Yesterday was the index’s eighth straight day of gains during which the index has rallied more than 6%.  This morning, the country is in the spotlight again as Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.b) has agreed to buy a $500 million stake in Nu Pagamentos SA, valuing the company at $30 billion.  You may have never heard of Nu Pagamentos, but it is a privately held company that does business under the name Nubank, which is the largest fintech company in Latin America.

With the recent weakness in the dollar, the rally in Brazilian equities has been even stronger for US-based investors.  During the same eight-day winning streak, the Ibovespa is up over 12% is USD.  As shown in the chart below, though, while dollar weakness has flattered returns for Brazilian equities from a US-based investor’s perspective in the short-term, it’s been the opposite pattern over the longer term.  While the Ibovespa is well above its early 2020 highs in local currency terms, on a dollar-adjusted basis, it’s still down 11%.  Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.

Thus far in 2021, most of the 30 largest S&P 500 stocks are in the green on a year-to-date basis with a few notable exceptions.  The largest company with a $2.1 trillion market cap, Apple (AAPL), has fallen 5.88% year-to-date and is down nearly 14% from its 52-week high.  Of the 30 largest stocks, the only two other stocks that are down by more year-to-date and are also further below their 52-week highs are Netflix (NFLX) and Tesla (TSLA). TSLA has been particularly hard hit with a 17% loss so far in 2021 which brings it down 35% from its high. Conversely, Alphabet (GOOG), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), NVIDIA (NVDA), Bank of America (BAC), and Oracle (ORCL) are some of the stocks that are closest to new highs (around 1% away) and are up around 30% or better YTD. Unsurprisingly for an Energy sector stock, the best performer this year has been Exxon Mobil (XOM) which is closing in on a 50% gain YTD.

After setting new record highs right around a month ago, the S&P 500 pulled back to its 50-DMA which it found support at on May 12th.  The subsequent rally since then has seen the index make a run back up to those record highs which it has been hovering around in recent days.  Since its May 12th low, by far the two best-performing stocks in the 30 largest stocks have been NVIDIA (NVDA) which has gained 27.71%, and salesforce.com (CRM) which has risen a smaller, but still impressive, 12.85%; both companies reported triple plays in late May which partially played a role in that strength.  While far from a leader, AAPL is also up in that time as is the rest of the trillion-dollar market cap club.

Another interesting thing to note of the stocks in the table above is their distances from their analyst price targets.  There are a handful like JPMorgan Chase (JPM), NVIDIA (NVDA), and Bank of America (BAC) that are currently within 1% of their consensus price targets.  After their strong runs this year, though, the median distance from a target for the full list is approximately 10% below.  BAC is actually slightly above its target, and not many others can say that.  In fact, the only other name of the largest stocks currently trading above its analyst price target is Oracle (ORCL), and it’s doing so in a big way.  As shown above, ORCL is currently over 18% above its target. Going back through the history of the data for the stock, no other period since 2003 has seen ORCL trade as elevated above its target as it does now.  For ORCL to get back below its average price target, either its share price would need to fall or analysts would need to significantly increase their price targets.

Looking at the other end of the spectrum, Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL) are the two names furthest below their price targets.  For each of these stocks, trading that far below the analyst price target has been relatively uncommon over the past several years.  For these two stocks to get back to where they normally sit relative to analyst price targets, either the stocks need to rise or analysts need to lower their price targets.  For these two mega-cap behemoths, we think the latter is more likely.

While it does not stand out from the list of the other largest stocks as it only trades 6.5% below its target, TSLA is also notable.  Over the past two years, the stock has continuously left its targets in the dust on average sitting 26% above. In July of last year, TSLA’s price even doubled the target price.  But with the stock’s weakness this year, its distance from its price target is much closer in line with the historical average.  Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.

Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read over the past week. The links are mostly market related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.

While you’re here, join Bespoke Premium with a 30-day free trial!

New Research

Why Do Borrowers Default on Mortgages? A New Method For Causal Attribution by Peter Ganong & Pascal J. Noel (NBER Working Papers)

What drives default on mortgages? The authors estimate that roughly 97% of all mortgage defaults take place because of an adverse shock which leaves borrowers unable to cover their monthly payment, not because they are strategically walking away from an LTV over 100. [Link; soft paywall]

How Teach for America Affects Beliefs about Education by Kathrine M. Conn, Virginia S. Lovison, and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo (Education Next)

TFA volunteers acquire a greater appreciation for societal inequality in educational under-attainment, reduces support for charter schools and vouchers, and raises optimism that an excellent education in the US is possible for all children. [Link]

Labor Markets

The Divergent Signals about Labor Market Slack by Troy Gilchrist & Bart Hobijn (FRBSF Economic Letter)

Using a broader snapshot of the labor market shows that on balance the U3 unemployment rate is roughly representative of where things currently stand…with the important caveat that dispersion across indicators is much higher than historically has been the case. [Link]

Restaurants, Supermarkets Can’t Find Enough Workers to Open New Locations by Jaewon Kang & Heather Haddon (WSJ)

Grocers and restaurants that rely on large pools of low-prerequisite labor are struggling to find enough workers to staff new locations. [Link; paywall]

Price Tags

Why dirt from Mars could be the most expensive substance known to mankind (Science Insider/Twitter)

Three different joint space missions are hoping to bring back a couple of pounds of soil from Mars at a price tag of more than $9bn, making it easily the most expensive way to grow tomatoes ever devised (note: that’s not what scientists will use it for). [Link]

Building a Home in the U.S. Has Never Been More Expensive by Marcy Nicholson, Dave Merrill, & Cedric Sam (Bloomberg)

A fascinating walk-through of how much prices have risen for key inputs to home construction. Lumber features prominently but many other costs have also soared. [Link; soft paywall]

Disease

Covid-19 Prevention Measures Are Keeping Childhood Diseases Like Chickenpox at Bay by Peter Landers & Miho Inada (WSJ)

While COVID and related responses have had lots of negative impacts on children, there are some positives: more handwashing, masks, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions have led to a collapse in case counts for diseases like flu, chicken pox, strep throat, and rotavirus. [Link; paywall]

Moderna to take mRNA flu and HIV vaccines into Phase 1 trials this year by Rachel Arthur (BioPharma)

The company behind one of the two mRNA vaccines that were first to market in the fight against COVID is starting Phase 1 trials for flu and HIV this year, with another vaccine against cytomegalovirus (which causes mononucleosis). [Link]

Matters of State

Shrinking California by Will Wilkinson (Substack)

In 2020 California’s population shrank by over 180,000 people, with an interesting array of implications for both that state’s politics and states where former residents of the Bear Flag Republic are heading to. [Link]

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice Is Personally Liable for $700 Million in Greensill Loans by Julie Steinberg & Duncan Mavin (WSJ)

Companies owned by West Virginia’s two-term governor are on the hook for hundreds of millions in loans backed by coal receivables, and the financial liability may roll all the way up to the governor’s mansion. [Link; paywall]

Cheating

Inside The ‘World’s Largest’ Video Game Cheating Empire by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai (Vice)

A group that found exploits to Tencent’s Playerunkown Battlegrounds Mobile and sold them for millions ended up attracting the attention of Chinese police. [Link]

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Have a great weekend!

FBI Background checks for the month of May were just recently disclosed, and just as many aspects of the economy and overall society are starting to return back to more normal levels following the disruptions caused by COVID, so too are gun sales based on the latest data.  For the month of May, background checks fell from 3.51 million down to 3.22 million which is the lowest monthly reading since last September.

While the m/m decline in background checks wasn’t particularly extreme, the two-month rate of decline was the largest ever, falling by nearly 1.5 million.

With the declines in background checks, the y/y increase has really started to collapse.  At 4.2%, the y/y change in background checks has dropped to its lowest level in more than two years (March 2019).

While the pace of gun background checks has been declining, the prices of gun stocks have actually been on the rise.  Below we show the one-year price charts of Sturm Ruger (RGR) and Smith and Wesson (SWBI) which are the two publicly traded pure-play gun manufacturers. Both stocks surged late last spring and into the early summer following the George Floyd killing and subsequent protests and riots across the country, but they quickly pulled back in the summer months and traded relatively rangebound over the following six months.  Since late April, though, both stocks have started to attract investor interest, and RGR is actually close to 52-week highs while SWBI is close to taking out its high from early this year.  Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.

Bullish sentiment measured through the AAII weekly survey was at the lowest level since the fall last week, but after jumping 7.7 percentage points, it is now at the highest level since the end of April. Not only is it high relative to the past few weeks, but the increase also brings bullish sentiment 6 percentage points back above its historical average. Additionally, the week over week increase was the largest since the week of April 8th when the reading had risen 11.1 percentage points.

In recent weeks, neutral sentiment had been surging; topping 37% last week for the highest reading since the first week of 2020.  Although it reversed lower this week down to 36.2%, neutral sentiment remains around some of the strongest levels in over a year.

With the pickup in bullish sentiment, bearish sentiment plummeted to 19.8% on a 6.6 percentage point decile; the largest since February.  Falling below 20%, bearish sentiment took out its March and April lows and is now at the lowest level since January 2018.

Not only is that one of the lowest readings in bearish sentiment in recent history, but that drop below 20% brought to an end a 115-week long streak of readings in bearish sentiment above that level.  As shown below, that surpassed a three-week shorter streak ending in December 2017 to make for the second-longest such streak on record.  The longest streak which ended in December 2010 went on for more than twice as long as this most recent run.

Historically, lower readings in bearish sentiment have tended towards weaker performance for the S&P 500 going forward as shown below.  But when it comes to the past times that bearish sentiment has broken below 20% for the first time in at least 50 weeks, performance has actually tended to consistently be positive. In fact, across each of the past six instances, the S&P 500 has been higher six months out every time. Granted, for the most part the typical move higher is usually smaller than other periods.  Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options for our best research available.

It was just the start of last month that initial jobless claims fell below a half million for the first time since the start of the pandemic and a month before that marked the first reading below 600K.  Another month in the books and it was another 100K milestone reached this week. For the first time since the pandemic began, seasonally-adjusted claims fell below 400K to 385K this week.  That is now only 129K above the pre-pandemic level from last March; the last week before claims exploded above a million.

While the drop below 400K may sound like a positive, it was entirely due to the seasonal adjustment as the actual level of claims rose to 425.5K from 419.4K.  That is still at the bottom of the pandemic range albeit slightly off the lows. Additionally, while small,  that week over week uptick is a bit unusual from a historical perspective as the current week of the year (22nd) has only seen a sequential uptick 18.5% of the time since the start of the data in 1967.

In spite of the uptick in regular state programs, claims through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program continued to pick up the slack. The program saw another impressive drop with the program only totaling 76.1K claims.  That is down roughly 17.5K from last week and sets more pandemic lows. On a combined basis, initial claims between the two programs now sit just above 500K.

As we have frequently mentioned recently, while initial jobless claims keep coming in with impressive readings, continuing claims remain uninspiring. For the week ending May 21st, claims had risen by 169K to 3.77 million.  That brings continuing claims to the highest level since the week of March 12 and the 169K WoW increase was the largest since the last week of November when they rose 254K.  Overall, the picture at the headline level remains the same in which initial claims are strong and improving while continuing claims have hit a bump in the road.

Whereas the non-seasonally adjusted picture was less positive for initial claims, there is yet another divergence compared to continuing claims.  The NSA continuing claims reading that includes all programs is delayed two additional weeks to the most recent initial claims data. That means the most recent reading in the charts below is for the week of May 14th. That week saw another decline down to new lows of 15.46 million on a combined basis with the biggest contributors to that decline being regular state, PUA, and Extended Benefits programs.  On the other hand, Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Assistance (PEUC) claims held things back as the program saw a 102K increase; bringing it to the highest level since mid-April. That meant PEUC claims’ share of total continuing claims reached the highest level yet at 34.2%. That means although regular state continuing claims have been deteriorating, the broader picture continues to improve.    Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options for our best research available.