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“Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.” – Peter Drucker
As hard as it may be to believe, your calendar is right; it is May, and 2021 is already a third of the way behind us. If you feel like time has gotten away from you, don’t worry, there are still eight months left. From the market’s perspective, the first trading day of May is looking a lot like the first day of April which looked a lot like March which looked a lot like February. All three starts to those months came with heavy buying as the S&P 500 was up over 1% all three times! Futures aren’t quite that strong this morning, but the S&P 500 is indicated to open higher by half of one percent.
On the economic calendar, the major report of the day is the ISM Manufacturing at 10 AM. Economists are collectively expecting a level of 65.0 versus March’s reading of 64.7 which was the highest level since the early 1980s.
Read today’s Morning Lineup for a recap of all the major market news and events including the biggest overnight events, some key earnings reports, economic data from around the world, as well as the latest US and international COVID trends including our vaccination trackers, and much more.
We highlighted it in this week’s Bespoke Report, but we wanted to show again this morning how strong economic data was in the month of March. In our Matrix of Economic Indicators each month we summarize the y/y change in more than 30 different economic indicators and highlight whether they are showing positive or negative momentum versus their prior month’s y/y reading. We also track the net number of indicators showing positive momentum on a monthly basis over time.
For the month of March, only one of the economic indicators in our Matrix showed negative momentum while the remaining 35 all had positive momentum. While we’ve seen a lot of strength in the number of indicators showing positive momentum coming out of the pandemic, we have never seen anything nearly as strong as March’s net reading of +34. While March was exceptionally strong, the combination of a bounce back from economic weakness in February due to winter storms, tons of stimulus, and easy comps relative to March 2020 makes it unlikely that this degree of positive momentum will be matched again.
