Dear New World Investor: The August payrolls report showed 142,000 nonfarm payroll jobs added, fewer than the 165,000 expected by economists. July was revised down from +116,000 to +89,000. But the unemployment rate fell from 4.3% in July to 4.2% in August, the first decrease in the unemployment rate since March. Traders pretended a 0.1% difference for one month would make a big difference to the Fed, which is obvious nonsense. Wednesday morning’s initial market reaction to the August Consumer Price Index (CPI) – down 88 points on the S&P 500 – was not about the numbers, the numbers vs....

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Dear New World Investor: This morning’s first revision of the June quarter real GDP report raised the annual growth rate from 2.8% to a healthy 3.0%. That’s more than double the sluggish 1.4% growth rate in the March quarter. Click for larger graphic h/t Yahoo Finance Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity, rose at a 2.9% annual rate last quarter, up from 2.3% in the initial estimate. Business investment expanded at a 7.5% rate, led by a 10.8% jump in investment in equipment. The Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation measure, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index (PCE),...

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Dear New World Investor: This morning’s first estimate of June quarter real GDP growth surprised me by coming in at 2.8%, pretty much right on the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model estimate I reported last week at +2.7%. I wrote: “The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model forecast for June quarter real GDP growth rose to +2.7%, well above the Blue Chip economists’ forecast. I don’t see how it could be that strong, but we’ll find out next Thursday morning.” Click for larger graphic h/t Yahoo Finance Well, I was wrong and the consensus for +2.0% was really wrong. March quarter GDP was...

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Dear New World Investor: A major PC crash slowed and shortened this issue. No fractal, GDPNow, or bitcoin graphics. My apologies for that – the little laptop did its best and we’ll be good to go next week. Yesterday’s core Consumer Price Index (CPI) report for May showed a month-over-month increase of just 0.2%, a tick below the 0.3% expected as well as April’s 0.3%. The Fed now expects only one quarter-point (25 basis points) reduction in the Fed funds rate this year. They now expect four cuts in 2025 instead of three, so not much really changed. As always,...

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I was planning to issue a Buy recommendation on Palantir (PLTR) in this Thursday’s letter, but after the company reported a great quarter today Wall Street is clobbering the stock in the aftermarket. That’s dumb, and I want you to take advantage of them. I’ll have the basic write-up on Thursday. PLTR is an outstanding Big Tech dominator of AI software. I recommended PLTR in Boomberg on October 28, 2022 at $8.64 Their business has improved so rapidly that it’s still cheap. Here is this week’s Boomberg write-up: Palantir (PLTR) reported a good March quarter, raised guidance for the year,...

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Dear New World Investor: Although tomorrow is a stock market holiday, we are supposed to get the February Personal Consumption Index inflation. Core PCE is estimated at over 3%, which will keep the Fed in “High – but not higher – for longer” mode. Click for larger graphic h/t @Mayhem4Markets Next Friday, April 5, we see March payrolls. There is a simple rule to predict the beginning of a recession: A 10% rise in unemployed people. Click for larger graphic h/t @MichaelKantro To get there, we need to see services weaken. According to the St. Louis Fed, over the past...

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Dear New World Investor: The Fed met and said the economy is much stronger than they expected but they still expect three quarter-point reductions in the Fed funds rate this year. I think they’re wrong on both counts. You could obsess over the gory details or you could just look at all you need to know: Wednesday’s daily price action. Click for larger graphic It’s hard to find undervalued stocks in this market, but I’ve found one that can pull off a turnaround. Yeah, yeah, I know the old joke: “When management says it’s a turnaround, they are about to...

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Dear New World Investor: There’s now $8 trillion in money market funds and CDs. Most of that will stay in some form of fixed income, but some has been waiting for a market drop to buy stocks. Friday’s record S&P 500 close should get some of the sideline money throwing in the towel and buying stocks. Historically, after an all-time high the S&P 500 has outperformed its long-term average one-, three-, six-, and 12-months later. The one-month returns are not quite as strong, suggesting a short-term overbought condition in some cases. One year later, the S&P 500 has risen 13...

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Dear New World Investor: The January Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in at +6.4% year-over-year, its lowest since October 2021 but hotter than expected, and +0,5% month-over-month. The index for shelter accounted for nearly half of the monthly increase and was by far the largest contributor. As we (and the Fed) know, that index badly lags the real-world costs. When it starts picking up the downturn in rent, it will have a large negative impact on inflation that will last longer than before. Actually, it was a silver lining in the CPI data. With rent at -0.3%, closer to the...

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Dear New World Investor: Did non-farm payrolls really rise by 517,000 in January, clobbering the consensus estimate for 185,000? No, they did not. The Bureau of Labor Statistics changed the seasonal adjustment factors retroactively for 2022 and dumped all the changes into the January report. As Bloomberg chief economist Anna Wong wrote: “The January jobs report showed extremely robust growth, higher than the highest estimate in the Bloomberg survey. If it seems too good to be true, that’s because it is too good to be true — the gain is mostly due to seasonal factors and revisions to past data....

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