In an effort to gauge how much different countries, states, and cities are practicing social distancing, Google just recently launched COVID-19 Community Mobility reports which track activity at various types of establishments using the location history of users’ locations.  These reports provide a handy snapshot of how activity at various types of establishments has recently changed.  In the chart below, we have provided a snapshot of how activity at Retail & Recreational venues has changed relative to baseline readings on a state by state basis, but we would recommend that you go to the site and check out the detailed reports for your specific country or state.

The top chart shows each state’s change in traffic sorted by states that have seen the largest declines in traffic all the way to the least, and below that, we have sorted the results alphabetically by state, making it easier to find the individual state you are looking for.  In terms of states where traffic at retail establishments is down the most, Washington DC leads the way with a 64% decline in traffic.  Behind DC, the only other states where traffic is down over 60% are New York (-62%) and Vermont (-62%).  Other states that have seen the largest declines in traffic are Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Michigan, which have all been among the hardest-hit states from the outbreak.  One state that has been hard hit but where social distancing has been behind the curve is Louisiana at -45%.  Of all the states, traffic has declined by at least 30% in all but one state (Arkansas: -29%), but other states where there has been a relatively low amount of social distancing so far include Mississippi, Nebraska, Tennessee, and South Dakota.  All of these states have seen traffic decline by 35% or less. Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our full library of research and interactive tools.

Google search trend data has shown an influx of interest in the stock market. Search interest for the phrases “stock market” and “how to buy stocks” hit record levels in March as shown in the charts below. Although currently off those peaks, only a few days into April search interest remains very elevated relative to history. Current levels have even surpassed those during the financial crisis which marked the previous peak for “stock market” as well as the smaller peaks during many of the major sell-offs during the post crisis bull run. More granular, the current sell off has seemed to have enticed first time buyers. Search interest for the phrase “how to buy stocks” first peaked during the financial crisis which remained the high up until the late 2017/early 2018 top for the S&P 500 which also coincided with the bitcoin bubble. So even if sentiment remains very bearish at the moment, the broader public—especially the rookie investor—at least seems interested in buying in.

That is not to say everyone is buying though.  Search interest for those looking to short stocks reached its highest level ever in March and that has only surged more this month. Granted, interest in going long still outweighs those looking to take bearish bets as shown in the second chart below. Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our full library of research and interactive tools.

A very weak jobs number from the Labor Department for the month of March just rolled in.  Nonfarm payrolls fell 701K in March compared to 273K added jobs in February.  That was also a much weaker number than the consensus forecast which was only predicting a drop of 100K.  In fact, of all reports since 1998 in our Economic Indicator Database, this was the largest miss. This was also the first time since September 2010 that monthly payrolls have been negative.

Taking a longer-term look, this was also the eighth largest decline on record in the data going back to early 1939. The last time that a larger decline was observed was in March of 2009 (-800K).  One important factor to note about this month’s report is the collection period. Since the reference week for the monthly report is in the first half of the month, the massive job losses recorded in the second half of March were not even fully picked up in this report. In other words, next month’s report is going to be a LOT worse.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our interactive economic indicators monitor and much more.

Over the past year, the Technology sector has been the most notable sector in terms of outperformance relative to the S&P 500. As shown in the charts from our Sector Snapshot below, the relative strength chart for Technology has been in a steady uptrend for the past twelve months without much interruption even while the decade long bull market was coming to an end. In fact, last week it was the first sector to exit oversold territory after every sector was oversold for 13 days. The other sectors have not been as lucky. During the recent sell off, the relative performance of most sectors, especially cyclicals like Energy, Financials, and Industrials, fell sharply (indicating even worse declines than the S&P 500).  Consumer Staples and Health Care, on the other hand, have seen much stronger performance than the rest of the market.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access Sector Snapshot and much more.

Tuesday’s Consumer Confidence report managed to exceed expectations, but as we noted at the time, the survey for the March reports cuts off on the 18th, so as economic conditions turned south, sentiment levels also likely declined.  One area of the report where sentiment already has seen a notable decline is in consumer sentiment towards stock prices.  As shown in the top chart below, the percentage of consumers expecting stock prices to decline nearly doubled from 21.7% up to 39.2% while the percentage of consumers looking for higher prices dropped from 43.1% down to 32.3%. In the case of negative sentiment, the percentage of bearish consumers hasn’t been this high since late 2012.

Given the major shift in sentiment, the spread between bullish and bearish consumers has seen a major reversal falling from firmly positive (21.4) to firmly negative (-6.9).  By this measure, the spread between bullish and bearish investors hasn’t been this negative since February 2016.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our interactive economic indicators monitor and much more.