Busy, busy today with lots of data!
At the moment (8am), I only know that retail sales were flat to last week, which was 1% better than last year but this week is 3.3% better than last year because LAST YEAR TOTALLY SUCKED! That’s right, we are now comping to numbers that are so atrocious that in order to miss them we would have to all dig holes in our backyards, cover them with tarps (no, not the bailout package but a good conceptual image) and drink only rainwater and eat earthworms. Anything better than that will give us more economic activity than we had last November, when the market was completing a 50% dive off the previous year’s highs and we weren’t sure there was going to anything to be thankful for on November 27th.
Our market hit rock bottom on November 21st, the Friday before Thanksgiving (and an option expiration day) at about 7,500 on the Dow. People were generally shell-shocked but we did bounce back to 8,500 and drifted around there through Jan 1st (9,000) before plunging to 6,500 by March 9th. THAT my friends, is the period we are comping against! So beward “improvements” being sighted in the MSM as we are now comparing our weak recovery to a total train wreck and yes, it’s much better now, but better in the way that the Chicago Bears (4-6) are better than the Detroit Lions (2-8), not the way the Minessota Vikings (9-1) are better than the Lions.
Later today we have an update (and downgrade) of our Q3 GDP followed by Redbook Chain Store Sales and Case-Shiller Home Prices at 9. At 10 we get Consumer Confidence (or lack thereof), the FHFA Housing Price Index, the Richmond Fed Report and State Street’s Investor Confidence Index. Later today we have the results of a massive $39Bn 3-year Note Auction, the Fed Minutes at 2pm along with Industry Charge-offs and, finally, at 5pm we get the ABC Consumer Confidence (if any) Index.
It’s a very brave bunch of bulls who have run the futures up half a point off their lows this morning with all that data coming up. When I say brave of course, I mean the disgustingly manipulative and should be thrown in jail kind of brave but, since none of our regulators seem to care about the nonsense that goes on every day at the commodity and futures exchanges – I guess they are not so brave after all…
