The Closer – Bad Breadth, Flow of Funds Deep Dive – 12/12/24
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Looking for deeper insight into markets? In tonight’s Closer sent to Bespoke Institutional clients, we kick off with an overview of how bad breadth has been (page 1) followed by a dive into the rate hike in Brazil (page 2). We then take a deep dive into the Fed’s massive Flow of Fund report which received an update today. We cover topics like household net worth, debt growth, delinquencies, bank income, and more (pages 3 – 9). We finish with an overview of the week long bond reopening (page 10).
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Chart of the Day: Sticky Inflation
Bespoke’s Weekly Sector Snapshot — 12/12/24
General Electric (GE), Spin-Offs, and Dividends
Back in March, long-standing blue chip company General Electric (GE) spun-off and merged its energy businesses (formerly GE Power, GE Digital, and GE Renewable Energy) into GE Veranova (GEV). Since the spin-off on March 27, GEV is the second best performing stock in the S&P 500 with a 161.9% gain. That is second only to the near-200% gain in shares of Palantir (PLTR) in that same span and compares to a 15.76% gain for the S&P 500. Meanwhile, parent company General Electric (GE) has slightly outperformed the S&P 500 with a 16.5% gain while another one of its semi-recent spin-offs (occurring in January of last year), GE HealthCare Technologies (GEHC), is down double-digits.
The S&P U.S. Spin-Off Index measures the performance of companies that have a market cap of at least $1 billion and have been spun-off of a parent within the past four years. In the chart below, we show the return of this index versus the S&P 500 over the past decade. As shown, spin-offs have offered respectable returns albeit coming up short of that of the S&P 500. On a relative strength basis, spin-offs were actually outperforming the broader market throughout 2014 into 2017, but the trend has shifted out of favor in the past several years. With that being said, the recent strong run in GEV among others has meant that the relative strength line has made a considerable pivot higher in recent months.
Of course, in being one of the best performing S&P 500 stocks this year, GEV also leads in performance since the spring among other spin-offs. In the table below, we show the members of the spin-off index in addition to when they were spun-off, their performance since GEV’s spin-off, and their dividend yields. The only one of these companies holding a candle to GEV has been Victoria’s Secret (VSCO) which has also more than doubled since the spring. Conversely, there are ten that have fallen in that span.
In addition to its big rally, GEV is also worth mentioning because in a press release earlier this week the stock instated a dividend and announced a buyback. Among the aforementioned spin-off stocks, about half pay a dividend and GEV’s new dividend yield of just 0.3% is at the lower end of these names. The $0.25 payout goes ex-dividend on December 19 with it planned to be paid out in late January.
Switching over to the parent company, General Electric (GE) is an interesting story with a dividend history worth mentioning. Currently, GE has the 14th lowest dividend yield among dividend payers in the S&P 500 Industrials sector. While the sector itself doesn’t have a particularly large yield, almost half (45%) of its member stocks have a larger yield than the S&P 500. For GE, the company had an impressive 32 year run of raising its dividend annually from 1977 through 2009. However, hard times during the Financial Crisis resulted in that dividend to get slashed. The 2010s saw the company undergo significant restructurings which have clearly continued into today. Those culminated in another big cut in the dividend in 2017 and 2018. After the continued restructurings, in the current iteration, General Electric is focused primarily on the aerospace business. While the stock’s price has rebounded (currently it is around some of the highest levels since 2008), the dividend yield is a shell of its former self. With that being said, GE raised its dividend by 20 cents in the first quarter of the year, marking the first time GE raised its dividend since 2016.
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Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 12/12/24 – PPI Hot, Claims Cool
See what’s driving market performance around the world in today’s Morning Lineup. Bespoke’s Morning Lineup is the best way to start your trading day. Read it now by starting a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your trial.
“You only live once, and the way I live, once is enough.” – Frank Sinatra
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Heading into today’s PPI report, US equity futures took a breather after yesterday’s rally. While S&P 500 futures were just marginally lower, Nasdaq futures were down by a more sizable amount, indicating a decline of nearly 0.5%. Yields are up by a couple of basis points across the curve, crude oil is back above $70, and Bitcoin has held above $100K overnight for now at least.
The just-released November PPI came in hotter than expected at the headline level (0.4% vs 0.2%) and October’s reading was revised up from 0.2% to 0.3%. Ex food and energy, producer prices were inline with forecasts at 0.2%. While inflation data was on the hot side, jobless claims were weak. Initial claims spiked up to 242K versus forecasts for a reading of 220K while continuing claims also came in 9K higher than expected at 1.886 million. In response to the data, equity futures added modestly to their pre-market losses while yields erased most of their morning increases.
The Nasdaq broke out to a record high yesterday, and the S&P 500 finished within one-tenth of a percentage point shy of hitting its 58th record closing high this year, and the S&P 500 is up 27.5% for the year. With numbers like these, you can’t fault investors for being optimistic about the stock market. By just about every sentiment measure out there, investors have embraced the bull market, but many of the indicators we track seem somewhat restrained relative to the magnitude of the market’s gains.
Take the weekly sentiment survey from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII). In the latest update this week, bullish sentiment declined from 48.3% to 43.3%. Bulls still outnumber bears by over ten percentage points, but current levels are hardly extreme, and the weekly reading has been higher on just over 20% of all other weekly readings since the start of 2009.
Taking a closer look at bullish sentiment during the current bull market, the peak sentiment reading was just under a year ago on 12/21/23 when bullish sentiment reached 52.9%. Back in July shortly before the August pullback, bullish sentiment got close to that December reading reaching a level of 52.7%. Since then, bullish sentiment has been gradually trending lower with multiple lower highs and lower lows.
One reason sentiment has remained contained lies in the fact that breadth has been incredibly weak in recent days. As noted yesterday, the S&P 500’s daily breadth reading has been negative for eight straight trading days. Just over the last five trading days, the S&P 500 is essentially unchanged (-0.03%), but nine out of eleven sectors are lower with five down over 2%! Not exactly what you would associate with a year-end rally.
The Closer – CPI, Wages, Strong 10s – 12/11/24
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Looking for deeper insight into markets? In tonight’s Closer sent to Bespoke Institutional clients, we begin with a look into today’s CPI data (pages 1 and 2) in addition to wage growth and yields (page 3). We then review today’s very strong 10-year note reopening (page 4) and petroleum inventory data (page 5).
See today’s full post-market Closer and everything else Bespoke publishes by starting a 14-day trial to Bespoke Institutional today!
Daily Sector Snapshot — 12/11/24
Fixed Income Weekly — 12/11/24
Searching for ways to better understand the fixed income space or looking for actionable ideas in this asset class? Bespoke’s Fixed Income Weekly provides an update on rates and credit each week. We start off with a fresh piece of analysis driven by what’s in the headlines or driving the market in a given week. We then provide charts of how US Treasury futures and rates are trading, before moving on to a summary of recent fixed-income ETF performance, short-term interest rates including money market funds, and a trade idea. We summarize changes and recent developments for a variety of yield curves (UST, bund, Eurodollar, US breakeven inflation, and Bespoke’s Global Yield Curve) before finishing with a review of recent UST yield curve changes, spread changes for major credit products and international bonds, and 1-year return profiles for a cross-section of the fixed income world.
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Chart of the Day – Analyst Price Target Takedown
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 12/11/24 – CPI Right on Target
See what’s driving market performance around the world in today’s Morning Lineup. Bespoke’s Morning Lineup is the best way to start your trading day. Read it now by starting a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your trial.
“I certainly wouldn’t invest in the stock market. I never believed in it. Most people lose money because of the emotional difficulty involved.” – Bernie Madoff
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Equity futures and international markets were little changed headed into the November CPI report. The STOXX 600 was unchanged, and overnight the Nikkei was also unchanged. The CPI report continued the narrative that inflation remains sticky, but it wasn’t any worse than expected. For both the headline and core readings, the m/m and y/y readings were right in line with expectations. At 3.3% y/y, though, core CPI remains too high for the Fed’s liking. The lack of any upside surprises, though, has provided a boost to pre-market futures, bond yields have pulled back slightly, and Bitcoin has gotten a bump higher. The fact that the numbers were right in line with expectations, though, all but locks in a rate cut at next week’s meeting.
Remember when CPI reports were the only thing the market cared about? Back in late 2022 and early 2023 right in the middle of the Fed’s rate hiking cycle, the monthly release of CPI was to economists and traders what a Taylor Swift concert was to teenage and twenty-something girls (and a lot of other people). It was an event, and the S&P 500 regularly rallied or declined 1% or more in reaction to the monthly “drop”. As shown in the chart below, in late 2022 and early 2023, the 12-month average daily change in the S&P 500 on the day of CPI reports was a gain or loss of just under 2%. Dating back to the turn of the century, the only other time that market reactions to CPI reports were more volatile was during the financial crisis, but that was a period when overall volatility was a lot higher too, so moves of more than 1% were the norm on any day during that period.
As inflation data has become less ‘exciting’, the market’s infatuation with it has subsided. As shown in the chart below, the average daily change of the S&P 500 on CPI days has plummeted below the long-term average of 0.86% down to 0.71%.
The S&P 500’s daily change on CPI days since the start of 2022 when the Fed’s last rate hiking cycle kicked off, shows the declining importance of CPI data on the market. Over the previous six months, there has only been one month where the S&P 500 moved 1% on a CPI Day, and following last month’s report, the S&P 500 finished the day unchanged rising by just 0.02% or 2 basis points (bps). That was the smallest daily move on a CPI Day since 2019 and was a far cry from two years earlier when the S&P 500 rallied 5.54% in reaction to the October 2022 report which was the largest upside move in reaction to a CPI report since 2008 and the third largest since 1999.
One reason for the more muted reactions to recent CPI reports is that the data has become more behaved and less ‘exciting’. Whether that changes or not remains to be seen, but the recent stickiness of Core CPI relative to headline has economists speculating that there could be a second act.
