Common oil leaks honda accord v6
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
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2008.05.02 15:47 Collapse of Civilization
Discussion regarding the potential collapse of global civilization, defined as a significant decrease in human population and/or political/economic/social complexity over a considerable area, for an extended time. We seek to deepen our understanding of collapse while providing mutual support, not to document every detail of our demise.
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Visit our community site for vetted suppliers at http://theCBD.place. It's time that this subject was given more internet exposure. We are here to discuss topics related to medical marijuana and our experiences using CBD and other cannabis/hemp derived cannabinoids. Please do not assume that anyone here is a medical professional and be respectful of all sub members.
2023.06.03 03:01 SDcurious92040 23 Honda Civic sport motor oil leak.
 | At 3k I have noticed oil/gas smell coming from the ac vents. Unfortunately, motor gasket is leaking oil and exhaust manifold is rusty. I will update tomorrow after the dealership inspection. submitted by SDcurious92040 to Honda [link] [comments] |
2023.06.03 03:00 ehholfman Any insight regarding an oil pan replacement for a 2010 V6?
Hey y’all,
Been scouring YouTube for a good video on an oil pan replacement. Trying to broaden the searches to the J35 V6 and similar year Honda/Acura.
Doesn’t look too bad but would appreciate any insight for a TSX specifically.
submitted by ehholfman to AcuraTSX [link] [comments]
Been scouring YouTube for a good video on an oil pan replacement. Trying to broaden the searches to the J35 V6 and similar year Honda/Acura.
Doesn’t look too bad but would appreciate any insight for a TSX specifically.
2023.06.03 00:52 purplerockspebbles How common are tires that would fit onto a 2002 Honda Accord?
I bought completely new tires about a month ago for my 2002 Accord.
I was in an accident recently that totaled the car. There's usable parts on it, so I'm looking into local junkyards that will buy it from me. But I'm wondering, since the tires are brand new, if it would be better to take them off and sell them myself? They will not fit onto the car I bought.
The tires have 4 lug nuts, and I'm not sure how common that is? Will I even be able to sell tires that have only 4? I'm questioning if they're common enough to be worth trying to sell myself, or if it's going to take too long to find a buyer.
submitted by purplerockspebbles to TireQuestions [link] [comments]
I was in an accident recently that totaled the car. There's usable parts on it, so I'm looking into local junkyards that will buy it from me. But I'm wondering, since the tires are brand new, if it would be better to take them off and sell them myself? They will not fit onto the car I bought.
The tires have 4 lug nuts, and I'm not sure how common that is? Will I even be able to sell tires that have only 4? I'm questioning if they're common enough to be worth trying to sell myself, or if it's going to take too long to find a buyer.
2023.06.03 00:22 TheHinedereBible 2000 Honda Accord
I have a 2000 honda accord EX Coupe with the 3.0 V6. Is it worthwhile to bypass the egr on it? I'm not trying to gain any power or anything, I just wanna know if it's worth it to do without causing stalling. My current egr valve is popping a code for insufficient slow so I'm trying to decide whether to replace it or bypass it
submitted by TheHinedereBible to accord [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 23:41 bigbear0083 Wall Street Week Ahead for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023
Good Friday evening to all of you here on StockMarketChat! I hope everyone on this sub made out pretty nicely in the market this past week, and are ready for the new trading week ahead. :)
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Here is the list of notable tickers reporting earnings in this upcoming trading week ahead-
Here is the full list of companies report earnings for this upcoming trading week ahead which includes the date/time of release & consensus estimates courtesy of Earnings Whispers:
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a great new trading week ahead StockMarketChat. :)
submitted by bigbear0083 to u/bigbear0083 [link] [comments]
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Dow leaps 700 points on hot jobs report, Nasdaq notches sixth straight winning week: Live updates - (Source)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged Friday as traders cheered a strong jobs report and the passage of a debt ceiling bill that averts a U.S. default.
The 30-stock Dow jumped 701.19 points, or 2.12%, to end at 33,762.76 — its best day since January. The S&P 500 climbed 1.45% to close at 4,282.37. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.07% to 13,240.77, reaching its highest level since April 2022 during the session.
With Friday’s gains, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished the holiday-shortened trading week about 1.8% and 2% higher, respectively. The Dow’s Friday advance pushed it into positive territory for the week, finishing up around 2%. The Nasdaq notched its sixth straight week higher, a streak length not seen for the technology-heavy index since 2020.
Nonfarm payrolls grew much more than expected in May, rising 339,000. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a relatively modest 190,000 increase. It marked the 29th straight month of positive job growth.
Recently strong employment data had been pressuring stocks on the notion it would keep the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. But Friday data also showed average hourly earnings rose less than economists expected year over year, while the unemployment rate was higher than anticipated.
Both data points have given investors hope that the Fed could pause its interest rate hike campaign at the policy meeting later this month, according to Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.
“The so-called Goldilocks has entered the house,” Sandven said. “Clearly, on the bullish side, there are signs that inflation is starting to wane, speculation that the Fed is going to move into pause mode, increasing the likelihood of a soft landing.”
Easing concerns around the U.S. debt ceiling also helped sentiment. The Senate passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling late Thursday night, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk. That comes after the House passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Wednesday, just days before the June 5 deadline set by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Lululemon shares popped more than 11% on strong results and a guidance boost, while MongoDB surged 28% on a blowout forecast.
This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL S&P TREE MAP FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
S&P Sectors for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE S&P SECTORS FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Indices for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR INDICES FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Futures Markets as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR FUTURES INDICES AS OF FRIDAY!)
Economic Calendar for the Week Ahead:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ECONOMIC CALENDAR FOR THE WEEK AHEAD!)
Percentage Changes for the Major Indices, WTD, MTD, QTD, YTD as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
S&P Sectors for the Past Week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Pullback/Correction Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Rally Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Friday's Stock Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #1!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #2!)
A Resilient Labor Market = A Resilient Economy
Another month, another employment surprise. Should we be surprised anymore?
Economists expected payrolls to grow by about 187,000 in May. That’s still a solid job growth number, but a stepdown from what we’ve seen this year through April. However, actual payroll growth beat expectations for the 14th straight month.
The economy created 339,000 jobs in May, close to double expectations. Better still, payroll growth in March and April were revised higher by a total of 93,000!
- March payrolls were revised up by 52,000, from 165,000 to 217,000
- April payroll were revised up by 41,000, from 253,000 to 294,000
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
We’ve got two months of payroll data since the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March, and nothing suggests weakness arising from that banking crisis.
Over the first five months of the year, the economy’s added 1.5 million jobs. That in a nutshell tells you how the economy is doing. For perspective, the average annual payroll growth between 1940 and 2022 was 1.5 million. During the last expansion, 2010-2019, average annual payroll growth was 2.2 million per year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
But what about the unemployment rate?
The unemployment rate did rise from a 50-year low of 3.4% to 3.7%. This does raise some cause for concern but digging through the data suggests it may be noise more than anything else.
It probably helps to understand that the job growth and unemployment rate data come from different sources. The former comes from asking about 120,000+ businesses how many people they hired. The latter comes from asking about 60,000 households about their employment status. No surprise, the latter is noisier.
A big reason for the weak household survey (and rising unemployment rate) is that more than 400,000 people who were self-employed said they were no longer employed. As you can see in the following chart this is very noisy data, but the recent trend seems to be toward lower self-employment. It’s basically reversing the surge we saw in 2021, when self-employment surged. So, what we’re seeing now may simply be normalization of the labor market as more workers move from self-employment to W2 jobs with an employer.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Also, the unemployment rate can be impacted by people leaving the labor force (technically defined as those “not looking for work”) and an aging population. I’ve discussed in prior blogs how we can get around this by looking at the employment-population ratio for prime age workers, i.e. workers aged 25-54 years. This measures the number of people working as a percent of the civilian population. Think of it as the opposite of the unemployment rate, and because we use prime age, you also get around the demographic issue.
The good news is that the prime-age employment-population ratio dropped only a tick, from 80.8% to 80.7%. This still leaves it higher than at any point between 2002 and 2022.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the labor market remains strong and resilient, despite all the recession calls. Perhaps its not as strong as the headline payroll growth number of 339,000 suggests, but any number above 150,000 would be good at this point. And we’re certainly well above that.
In fact, looking at the job growth and employment-population data, this labor market is probably the strongest we’ve seen since the late 1990’s. Our view since the end of last year has been that the economy can avoid a recession this year, and nothing we’ve seen to date suggests we need to reverse that view. Far from it.
June Better in Pre-Election Years
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Since 1971 June has shone brighter on NASDAQ stocks as a rule ranking eighth best with an 0.8% average gain, up 29 of 52 years. This contributes to NASDAQ’s “Best 8 Months” which ends in June. Small caps also fare well in June. Russell 2000 has averaged 0.6% in June since 1979 advancing 63.6% of the time.
June ranks near the bottom on the Dow Jones Industrials just above September since 1950 with an average loss of 0.2%. S&P 500 performs similarly poorly, ranking ninth, but essentially flat (0.02% average gain).
Despite being much stronger S&P 500 pre-election year June ranks fifth best. For the rest it is just sixth best. Average monthly gains in pre-election year June range from DJIA 1.1% to a respectable 2.4% for NASDAQ. Russell 2000 has been the most consistently bullish in pre-election years, up 8 of the last 11 (72.7% of the time).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
The June Swoon?
Stocks did it again, as the S&P 500 gained 0.2% in the month of May, making it now 10 of the past 11 years that stocks finished green in May. Of course, it gained only 0.01% last year and only 0.25% this year, so the recent returns weren’t off the charts by any measure.
Looking specifically at this year, tech added more than 9% in May, thanks to excitement over AI and Nvidia, with communication services and consumer discretionary also in the green, while the other eight sectors were lower.
Specifically, turning to the month of June, stocks historically have hit a bit of trouble here. Since 1950, up 0.03% on average, the fourth worst month of the year. Over the past 20 years, only January and September have been worse and in the past decade, it is again the fourth worst month. The one bit of good news is during a pre-election year is it up 1.5%, the fifth-best month of the year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here’s another chart we’ve shared before, but years that gained big in January (like 2023) tend to see some periods of consolidation in late May/early June, but eventually experience a surge higher into July. Given the flattish overall May, this could be playing out again.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
What if stocks were having a good year heading into June? Since 1950, if the S&P 500 was up more than 8% for the year going into June (like this year), the month of June was up an impressive 1.2% on average versus the average June return of 0.03%, while in a pre-election year the returns jumped to 1.8%. The percent of the time where returns were higher gets better as well, from 54.8% in your average June to nearly 74% if up 8% or more for the year heading into June, to 80% of the time higher if up 8% for the year in a pre-election year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Overall, it has been a very nice run for stocks this year and we remain overweight stocks in the Carson Investment Research House Views. June could potentially cause some volatility, but when all is said and done, we wouldn’t bet against more strength and higher prices in June.
NASDAQ and Russell 2000 Lead June Pre-Election Strength
Over the last 21 years, June has been a rather lackluster month. DJIA, S&P 500 and Russell 1000 have all recorded average losses in the month. Russell 2000 has fared better with a modest average gain. Historically the month has opened respectably, advancing on the first and second trading days.
From there the market then drifted sideways and lower into negative territory just ahead of mid-month. Here the market rallied to create a nice mid-month bulge that quickly evaporated and returned to losses. The brisk, post, mid-month drop is typically followed by a month end rally led by technology and small caps.
Historical performance in pre-election years has been much stronger with all five indexes finishing with average gains. June’s overall pattern in pre-election is similar to the last 21-years pattern with a brief, shallow pullback after a solid start.
In pre-election years the mid-month rally has been much more robust beginning around the sixth trading day and lasting until the fifteenth. Followed by another modest retreat and rally into the end of Q2.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
May and YTD 2023 Asset Class Performance
May 2023 is now behind us, and below is a look at how various asset classes performed during the month using US-listed exchange-traded products as proxies. We also include YTD and YoY total returns.
May was a month of divergence where Tech/AI soared, and the rest of the market fell. Notably, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) gained 7.88% in May while the Dow Jones Dividend ETF (DVY) fell 7.7%. That's a 15 percentage-point spread!
At the sector level, it was a similar story. While the Tech sector (XLK) rose 8.9%, sectors like Energy (XLE), Consumer Staples (XLP), Materials (XLB), and Utilities (XLU) fell more than 5%. In total, 8 of 11 sectors were in the red for the month.
Outside the US, we saw pullbacks in most areas of the world other than Brazil, India, and Japan. China, Hong Kong, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the UK all fell more than 5%.
All of the commodity-related ETFs/ETNs were in the red for May, with oil (USO) and natural gas (UNG) falling the most at more than 10% each.
Finally, fixed-income ETFs also fell in May as interest rates bounced back. The aggregate bond market ETF (AGG) was down 1.14% in May, leaving it up just 2.6% YTD and down 2.2% year-over-year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
How Worried Should We Be About Consumer Debt?
A very common question we get these days is whether we’re concerned about the massive increase in consumer debt.
Short answer: No. Well, not yet anyway. But let’s walk through it in 6 charts.
The New York Federal Reserve (NY Fed) releases a quarterly report on household debt and credit, and the latest one that was released last week came with the headline:
“Household Debt Hits $17.05 Trillion in First Quarter.” But let’s look at the details. Household debt increased by $148 billion in Q1. That translates to a 0.9% increase, which is the slowest quarterly increase in two years. Most of the increase in debt was from mortgage originations ($121 billion) – mortgage debt makes up $12 trillion of the total $17 trillion in debt. The rest was auto loan and student loan balances.
Here’s something interesting: credit card balances were flat in Q1, at $986 billion. The fact that overall balances are higher than where they were in 2019 ($927 billion) should not be surprising given we just experienced a lot of inflation. Prices rose at the fastest pace in 40 years, and so you should expect card balances to increase. However, incomes rose as well.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
When you think debt, the key question is whether households are able to service that debt. A good measure of that is to look at debt service costs as a percent of disposable income. As of Q4 2022, that’s at 9.7%, slightly lower than what it was before the pandemic and well below the historical average.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
There’s even better news: disposable income grew 2.9% in the first quarter of 2023. Significantly higher than the 0.9% increase in total household debt, let alone interest costs!
Part of that includes the large boost to social security income due to inflation adjustments in January. Also, tax brackets were adjusted higher, resulting in more money in household wallets.
But even if you exclude these one-off increases, disposable income growth has been strong between February and April, rising at a 5% annualized pace. In fact, employee compensation by itself has risen at a 3.9% annualized pace over the past three months. Meanwhile, inflation is running just about 3% – which means households are seeing real income gains (adjusted for inflation).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
This is why consumers don’t feel the need to borrow to the extent they did before the pandemic. Credit utilization rates measure credit card balances as a percent of available credit. As you can see in the following chart, utilization rates for both credit cards and home equity lines of credit are well below pre-pandemic averages.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Lack of stress showing in delinquency data as well
Another way to look for signs of consumer stress is to look at the debt delinquency data. As of the first quarter, the NY Fed survey showed that the percent of loan balances that were more than 90 days delinquent was stable around 1.5%. That’s down from 1.9% a year ago, and quite a bit below the 3% average in 2019.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Even third-party collections are at record lows, with just over 5% of consumers having collections against them as of the first quarter. This is down from 6% a year ago and below the 2019 average of 9.2%. The average collection amount per person is $1,316, which is lower than the $1,452 average in late 2019. This is surprising because just with inflation you’d have thought the amount would be higher.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the data on consumer finances is not showing much cause for concern. So, count us in the “not worried” camp. At least, not yet.
Some Good Inflation News
While the market prices in a much higher likelihood of a rate hike at the June meeting, there was actually some decent news on the inflation front today. Starting with the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence report, in this month's update, the inflation expectations component fell to 6.1% from a peak of 7.9% fifteen months ago in March 2022 (first time reading touched 7.9%). Looking at the chart below, this reading was also at 6.1% fifteen months before that first peak. In other words, for all the talk about how inflation has been stickier, the pace of decline in this indicator on the way down has been the same as the pace of increase on the way up.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Another notable report was today's release of the Dallas Fed Manufacturing report. The Prices Paid component of that report showed a decline from 19.5 down to 13.8 which was the lowest reading since July 2020. For the month of May, two of the five components (Empire and Philadelphia) showed modest m/m increases from multi-month lows, and three showed significant declines to multi-month lows. The chart below shows a composite of the Prices Paid component using the z-scores for each of the five individual components going back to 2010. The peak for this component was 19 months ago in November 2021. Unlike the inflation expectations of the Conference Board survey, this reading hasn't declined quite as fast as it increased in the 19 months leading up to the peak, but at -0.2, it is still below its historical average dating back to 2010 and back down to levels it was at right before the COVID shock hit the economy in early 2020.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Home Prices Bounce in Hardest Hit Areas
March data on home prices across the country were released today with updated S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller numbers. Case Shiller home prices had been falling rapidly in many of the twenty cities tracked, but in March we actually saw a pretty big month-over-month bounce in some of the hardest-hit areas like San Diego, San Francisco, LA, Denver, and Phoenix. Some cities still saw declines, however. Las Vegas saw a m/m drop of 0.93%, while Miami fell 0.41%, and Seattle fell 0.28%.
On a year-over-year basis, Miami is still up the most with a gain of 10.86%. As shown in the table below, Miami home prices are up 59.87% from pre-COVID levels in February 2020, and they're only down 2.9% from post-COVID highs. Only Tampa is up more than Miami from pre-COVID levels (+61.04%), but Tampa prices are down more from their post-COVID highs (-4.70%) than Miami (-2.90%).
Four cities are down more than 10% from their post-COVID highs: San Diego (-10.12%), Las Vegas (-10.95%), San Francisco (-16.35%), and Seattle (-16.50%). New York is down the least from post-COVID highs of any city tracked at just -2.9%.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Below we include charts of home price levels across all 20 cities tracked by Case Shiller along with the three composite indices. We've included a vertical red line on each chart to highlight pre-COVID levels. When looking through the charts, you can see this month's small bounce back in most cities after a 6-9 month pullback in prices from peaks seen early last year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
STOCK MARKET VIDEO: Stock Market Analysis Video for Week Ending June 5th, 2023
(CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!)
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)STOCK MARKET VIDEO: ShadowTrader Video Weekly 6/2/23
([CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!]())
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)($NIO $GTLB $GME $CIEN $DOCU $SAIC $ASO $SJM $CXM $THO $OLLI $MOMO $CBRL $FERG $TTC $HQY $CPB $PLAY $QMCO $FCEL $LOVE $ABM $CNM $HTOO $TCOM $JOAN $UNFI $SFIX $CHS $GIII $SIG $SMAR $PL $ZFOX $HYZN $VRA $CASY $MTN $SMTC $ALYA $DBI $SCWX $JILL $OESX $BSE $REVG $VBNK $VRNT $RENT $HCP)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S MOST NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S HIGHEST VOLATILITY EARNINGS RELEASES!)
([CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!]())
(N/A.)
Monday 6.5.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Monday 6.5.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Friday 6.9.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)
Friday 6.9.23 After Market Close:
([CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!]())
(NONE.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.) (T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
DISCUSS!
What are you all watching for in this upcoming trading week?Join the Official Reddit Stock Market Chat Discord Server HERE!
2023.06.02 23:40 bigbear0083 Wall Street Week Ahead for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023
Good Friday evening to all of you here on WallStreetStockMarket! I hope everyone on this sub made out pretty nicely in the market this past week, and are ready for the new trading week ahead. :)
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Here is the list of notable tickers reporting earnings in this upcoming trading week ahead-
Here is the full list of companies report earnings for this upcoming trading week ahead which includes the date/time of release & consensus estimates courtesy of Earnings Whispers:
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a great new trading week ahead WallStreetStockMarket. :)
submitted by bigbear0083 to WallStreetStockMarket [link] [comments]
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Dow leaps 700 points on hot jobs report, Nasdaq notches sixth straight winning week: Live updates - (Source)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged Friday as traders cheered a strong jobs report and the passage of a debt ceiling bill that averts a U.S. default.
The 30-stock Dow jumped 701.19 points, or 2.12%, to end at 33,762.76 — its best day since January. The S&P 500 climbed 1.45% to close at 4,282.37. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.07% to 13,240.77, reaching its highest level since April 2022 during the session.
With Friday’s gains, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished the holiday-shortened trading week about 1.8% and 2% higher, respectively. The Dow’s Friday advance pushed it into positive territory for the week, finishing up around 2%. The Nasdaq notched its sixth straight week higher, a streak length not seen for the technology-heavy index since 2020.
Nonfarm payrolls grew much more than expected in May, rising 339,000. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a relatively modest 190,000 increase. It marked the 29th straight month of positive job growth.
Recently strong employment data had been pressuring stocks on the notion it would keep the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. But Friday data also showed average hourly earnings rose less than economists expected year over year, while the unemployment rate was higher than anticipated.
Both data points have given investors hope that the Fed could pause its interest rate hike campaign at the policy meeting later this month, according to Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.
“The so-called Goldilocks has entered the house,” Sandven said. “Clearly, on the bullish side, there are signs that inflation is starting to wane, speculation that the Fed is going to move into pause mode, increasing the likelihood of a soft landing.”
Easing concerns around the U.S. debt ceiling also helped sentiment. The Senate passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling late Thursday night, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk. That comes after the House passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Wednesday, just days before the June 5 deadline set by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Lululemon shares popped more than 11% on strong results and a guidance boost, while MongoDB surged 28% on a blowout forecast.
This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL S&P TREE MAP FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
S&P Sectors for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE S&P SECTORS FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Indices for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR INDICES FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Futures Markets as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR FUTURES INDICES AS OF FRIDAY!)
Economic Calendar for the Week Ahead:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ECONOMIC CALENDAR FOR THE WEEK AHEAD!)
Percentage Changes for the Major Indices, WTD, MTD, QTD, YTD as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
S&P Sectors for the Past Week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Pullback/Correction Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Rally Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Friday's Stock Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #1!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #2!)
A Resilient Labor Market = A Resilient Economy
Another month, another employment surprise. Should we be surprised anymore?
Economists expected payrolls to grow by about 187,000 in May. That’s still a solid job growth number, but a stepdown from what we’ve seen this year through April. However, actual payroll growth beat expectations for the 14th straight month.
The economy created 339,000 jobs in May, close to double expectations. Better still, payroll growth in March and April were revised higher by a total of 93,000!
- March payrolls were revised up by 52,000, from 165,000 to 217,000
- April payroll were revised up by 41,000, from 253,000 to 294,000
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
We’ve got two months of payroll data since the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March, and nothing suggests weakness arising from that banking crisis.
Over the first five months of the year, the economy’s added 1.5 million jobs. That in a nutshell tells you how the economy is doing. For perspective, the average annual payroll growth between 1940 and 2022 was 1.5 million. During the last expansion, 2010-2019, average annual payroll growth was 2.2 million per year.
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But what about the unemployment rate?
The unemployment rate did rise from a 50-year low of 3.4% to 3.7%. This does raise some cause for concern but digging through the data suggests it may be noise more than anything else.
It probably helps to understand that the job growth and unemployment rate data come from different sources. The former comes from asking about 120,000+ businesses how many people they hired. The latter comes from asking about 60,000 households about their employment status. No surprise, the latter is noisier.
A big reason for the weak household survey (and rising unemployment rate) is that more than 400,000 people who were self-employed said they were no longer employed. As you can see in the following chart this is very noisy data, but the recent trend seems to be toward lower self-employment. It’s basically reversing the surge we saw in 2021, when self-employment surged. So, what we’re seeing now may simply be normalization of the labor market as more workers move from self-employment to W2 jobs with an employer.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Also, the unemployment rate can be impacted by people leaving the labor force (technically defined as those “not looking for work”) and an aging population. I’ve discussed in prior blogs how we can get around this by looking at the employment-population ratio for prime age workers, i.e. workers aged 25-54 years. This measures the number of people working as a percent of the civilian population. Think of it as the opposite of the unemployment rate, and because we use prime age, you also get around the demographic issue.
The good news is that the prime-age employment-population ratio dropped only a tick, from 80.8% to 80.7%. This still leaves it higher than at any point between 2002 and 2022.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the labor market remains strong and resilient, despite all the recession calls. Perhaps its not as strong as the headline payroll growth number of 339,000 suggests, but any number above 150,000 would be good at this point. And we’re certainly well above that.
In fact, looking at the job growth and employment-population data, this labor market is probably the strongest we’ve seen since the late 1990’s. Our view since the end of last year has been that the economy can avoid a recession this year, and nothing we’ve seen to date suggests we need to reverse that view. Far from it.
June Better in Pre-Election Years
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Since 1971 June has shone brighter on NASDAQ stocks as a rule ranking eighth best with an 0.8% average gain, up 29 of 52 years. This contributes to NASDAQ’s “Best 8 Months” which ends in June. Small caps also fare well in June. Russell 2000 has averaged 0.6% in June since 1979 advancing 63.6% of the time.
June ranks near the bottom on the Dow Jones Industrials just above September since 1950 with an average loss of 0.2%. S&P 500 performs similarly poorly, ranking ninth, but essentially flat (0.02% average gain).
Despite being much stronger S&P 500 pre-election year June ranks fifth best. For the rest it is just sixth best. Average monthly gains in pre-election year June range from DJIA 1.1% to a respectable 2.4% for NASDAQ. Russell 2000 has been the most consistently bullish in pre-election years, up 8 of the last 11 (72.7% of the time).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
The June Swoon?
Stocks did it again, as the S&P 500 gained 0.2% in the month of May, making it now 10 of the past 11 years that stocks finished green in May. Of course, it gained only 0.01% last year and only 0.25% this year, so the recent returns weren’t off the charts by any measure.
Looking specifically at this year, tech added more than 9% in May, thanks to excitement over AI and Nvidia, with communication services and consumer discretionary also in the green, while the other eight sectors were lower.
Specifically, turning to the month of June, stocks historically have hit a bit of trouble here. Since 1950, up 0.03% on average, the fourth worst month of the year. Over the past 20 years, only January and September have been worse and in the past decade, it is again the fourth worst month. The one bit of good news is during a pre-election year is it up 1.5%, the fifth-best month of the year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here’s another chart we’ve shared before, but years that gained big in January (like 2023) tend to see some periods of consolidation in late May/early June, but eventually experience a surge higher into July. Given the flattish overall May, this could be playing out again.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
What if stocks were having a good year heading into June? Since 1950, if the S&P 500 was up more than 8% for the year going into June (like this year), the month of June was up an impressive 1.2% on average versus the average June return of 0.03%, while in a pre-election year the returns jumped to 1.8%. The percent of the time where returns were higher gets better as well, from 54.8% in your average June to nearly 74% if up 8% or more for the year heading into June, to 80% of the time higher if up 8% for the year in a pre-election year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Overall, it has been a very nice run for stocks this year and we remain overweight stocks in the Carson Investment Research House Views. June could potentially cause some volatility, but when all is said and done, we wouldn’t bet against more strength and higher prices in June.
NASDAQ and Russell 2000 Lead June Pre-Election Strength
Over the last 21 years, June has been a rather lackluster month. DJIA, S&P 500 and Russell 1000 have all recorded average losses in the month. Russell 2000 has fared better with a modest average gain. Historically the month has opened respectably, advancing on the first and second trading days.
From there the market then drifted sideways and lower into negative territory just ahead of mid-month. Here the market rallied to create a nice mid-month bulge that quickly evaporated and returned to losses. The brisk, post, mid-month drop is typically followed by a month end rally led by technology and small caps.
Historical performance in pre-election years has been much stronger with all five indexes finishing with average gains. June’s overall pattern in pre-election is similar to the last 21-years pattern with a brief, shallow pullback after a solid start.
In pre-election years the mid-month rally has been much more robust beginning around the sixth trading day and lasting until the fifteenth. Followed by another modest retreat and rally into the end of Q2.
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May and YTD 2023 Asset Class Performance
May 2023 is now behind us, and below is a look at how various asset classes performed during the month using US-listed exchange-traded products as proxies. We also include YTD and YoY total returns.
May was a month of divergence where Tech/AI soared, and the rest of the market fell. Notably, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) gained 7.88% in May while the Dow Jones Dividend ETF (DVY) fell 7.7%. That's a 15 percentage-point spread!
At the sector level, it was a similar story. While the Tech sector (XLK) rose 8.9%, sectors like Energy (XLE), Consumer Staples (XLP), Materials (XLB), and Utilities (XLU) fell more than 5%. In total, 8 of 11 sectors were in the red for the month.
Outside the US, we saw pullbacks in most areas of the world other than Brazil, India, and Japan. China, Hong Kong, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the UK all fell more than 5%.
All of the commodity-related ETFs/ETNs were in the red for May, with oil (USO) and natural gas (UNG) falling the most at more than 10% each.
Finally, fixed-income ETFs also fell in May as interest rates bounced back. The aggregate bond market ETF (AGG) was down 1.14% in May, leaving it up just 2.6% YTD and down 2.2% year-over-year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
How Worried Should We Be About Consumer Debt?
A very common question we get these days is whether we’re concerned about the massive increase in consumer debt.
Short answer: No. Well, not yet anyway. But let’s walk through it in 6 charts.
The New York Federal Reserve (NY Fed) releases a quarterly report on household debt and credit, and the latest one that was released last week came with the headline:
“Household Debt Hits $17.05 Trillion in First Quarter.” But let’s look at the details. Household debt increased by $148 billion in Q1. That translates to a 0.9% increase, which is the slowest quarterly increase in two years. Most of the increase in debt was from mortgage originations ($121 billion) – mortgage debt makes up $12 trillion of the total $17 trillion in debt. The rest was auto loan and student loan balances.
Here’s something interesting: credit card balances were flat in Q1, at $986 billion. The fact that overall balances are higher than where they were in 2019 ($927 billion) should not be surprising given we just experienced a lot of inflation. Prices rose at the fastest pace in 40 years, and so you should expect card balances to increase. However, incomes rose as well.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
When you think debt, the key question is whether households are able to service that debt. A good measure of that is to look at debt service costs as a percent of disposable income. As of Q4 2022, that’s at 9.7%, slightly lower than what it was before the pandemic and well below the historical average.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
There’s even better news: disposable income grew 2.9% in the first quarter of 2023. Significantly higher than the 0.9% increase in total household debt, let alone interest costs!
Part of that includes the large boost to social security income due to inflation adjustments in January. Also, tax brackets were adjusted higher, resulting in more money in household wallets.
But even if you exclude these one-off increases, disposable income growth has been strong between February and April, rising at a 5% annualized pace. In fact, employee compensation by itself has risen at a 3.9% annualized pace over the past three months. Meanwhile, inflation is running just about 3% – which means households are seeing real income gains (adjusted for inflation).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
This is why consumers don’t feel the need to borrow to the extent they did before the pandemic. Credit utilization rates measure credit card balances as a percent of available credit. As you can see in the following chart, utilization rates for both credit cards and home equity lines of credit are well below pre-pandemic averages.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Lack of stress showing in delinquency data as well
Another way to look for signs of consumer stress is to look at the debt delinquency data. As of the first quarter, the NY Fed survey showed that the percent of loan balances that were more than 90 days delinquent was stable around 1.5%. That’s down from 1.9% a year ago, and quite a bit below the 3% average in 2019.
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Even third-party collections are at record lows, with just over 5% of consumers having collections against them as of the first quarter. This is down from 6% a year ago and below the 2019 average of 9.2%. The average collection amount per person is $1,316, which is lower than the $1,452 average in late 2019. This is surprising because just with inflation you’d have thought the amount would be higher.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the data on consumer finances is not showing much cause for concern. So, count us in the “not worried” camp. At least, not yet.
Some Good Inflation News
While the market prices in a much higher likelihood of a rate hike at the June meeting, there was actually some decent news on the inflation front today. Starting with the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence report, in this month's update, the inflation expectations component fell to 6.1% from a peak of 7.9% fifteen months ago in March 2022 (first time reading touched 7.9%). Looking at the chart below, this reading was also at 6.1% fifteen months before that first peak. In other words, for all the talk about how inflation has been stickier, the pace of decline in this indicator on the way down has been the same as the pace of increase on the way up.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Another notable report was today's release of the Dallas Fed Manufacturing report. The Prices Paid component of that report showed a decline from 19.5 down to 13.8 which was the lowest reading since July 2020. For the month of May, two of the five components (Empire and Philadelphia) showed modest m/m increases from multi-month lows, and three showed significant declines to multi-month lows. The chart below shows a composite of the Prices Paid component using the z-scores for each of the five individual components going back to 2010. The peak for this component was 19 months ago in November 2021. Unlike the inflation expectations of the Conference Board survey, this reading hasn't declined quite as fast as it increased in the 19 months leading up to the peak, but at -0.2, it is still below its historical average dating back to 2010 and back down to levels it was at right before the COVID shock hit the economy in early 2020.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Home Prices Bounce in Hardest Hit Areas
March data on home prices across the country were released today with updated S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller numbers. Case Shiller home prices had been falling rapidly in many of the twenty cities tracked, but in March we actually saw a pretty big month-over-month bounce in some of the hardest-hit areas like San Diego, San Francisco, LA, Denver, and Phoenix. Some cities still saw declines, however. Las Vegas saw a m/m drop of 0.93%, while Miami fell 0.41%, and Seattle fell 0.28%.
On a year-over-year basis, Miami is still up the most with a gain of 10.86%. As shown in the table below, Miami home prices are up 59.87% from pre-COVID levels in February 2020, and they're only down 2.9% from post-COVID highs. Only Tampa is up more than Miami from pre-COVID levels (+61.04%), but Tampa prices are down more from their post-COVID highs (-4.70%) than Miami (-2.90%).
Four cities are down more than 10% from their post-COVID highs: San Diego (-10.12%), Las Vegas (-10.95%), San Francisco (-16.35%), and Seattle (-16.50%). New York is down the least from post-COVID highs of any city tracked at just -2.9%.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
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Below we include charts of home price levels across all 20 cities tracked by Case Shiller along with the three composite indices. We've included a vertical red line on each chart to highlight pre-COVID levels. When looking through the charts, you can see this month's small bounce back in most cities after a 6-9 month pullback in prices from peaks seen early last year.
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STOCK MARKET VIDEO: Stock Market Analysis Video for Week Ending June 5th, 2023
(CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!)
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)STOCK MARKET VIDEO: ShadowTrader Video Weekly 6/2/23
([CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!]())
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)($NIO $GTLB $GME $CIEN $DOCU $SAIC $ASO $SJM $CXM $THO $OLLI $MOMO $CBRL $FERG $TTC $HQY $CPB $PLAY $QMCO $FCEL $LOVE $ABM $CNM $HTOO $TCOM $JOAN $UNFI $SFIX $CHS $GIII $SIG $SMAR $PL $ZFOX $HYZN $VRA $CASY $MTN $SMTC $ALYA $DBI $SCWX $JILL $OESX $BSE $REVG $VBNK $VRNT $RENT $HCP)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S MOST NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S HIGHEST VOLATILITY EARNINGS RELEASES!)
([CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!]())
(N/A.)
Monday 6.5.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Monday 6.5.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Friday 6.9.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)
Friday 6.9.23 After Market Close:
([CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!]())
(NONE.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.) (T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.).
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DISCUSS!
What are you all watching for in this upcoming trading week?Join the Official Reddit Stock Market Chat Discord Server HERE!
2023.06.02 23:39 bigbear0083 Wall Street Week Ahead for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023
Good Friday evening to all of you here on StockMarketForums! I hope everyone on this sub made out pretty nicely in the market this past week, and are ready for the new trading week ahead. :)
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Here is the list of notable tickers reporting earnings in this upcoming trading week ahead-
Here is the full list of companies report earnings for this upcoming trading week ahead which includes the date/time of release & consensus estimates courtesy of Earnings Whispers:
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a great new trading week ahead StockMarketForums. :)
submitted by bigbear0083 to StockMarketForums [link] [comments]
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Dow leaps 700 points on hot jobs report, Nasdaq notches sixth straight winning week: Live updates - (Source)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged Friday as traders cheered a strong jobs report and the passage of a debt ceiling bill that averts a U.S. default.
The 30-stock Dow jumped 701.19 points, or 2.12%, to end at 33,762.76 — its best day since January. The S&P 500 climbed 1.45% to close at 4,282.37. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.07% to 13,240.77, reaching its highest level since April 2022 during the session.
With Friday’s gains, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished the holiday-shortened trading week about 1.8% and 2% higher, respectively. The Dow’s Friday advance pushed it into positive territory for the week, finishing up around 2%. The Nasdaq notched its sixth straight week higher, a streak length not seen for the technology-heavy index since 2020.
Nonfarm payrolls grew much more than expected in May, rising 339,000. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a relatively modest 190,000 increase. It marked the 29th straight month of positive job growth.
Recently strong employment data had been pressuring stocks on the notion it would keep the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. But Friday data also showed average hourly earnings rose less than economists expected year over year, while the unemployment rate was higher than anticipated.
Both data points have given investors hope that the Fed could pause its interest rate hike campaign at the policy meeting later this month, according to Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.
“The so-called Goldilocks has entered the house,” Sandven said. “Clearly, on the bullish side, there are signs that inflation is starting to wane, speculation that the Fed is going to move into pause mode, increasing the likelihood of a soft landing.”
Easing concerns around the U.S. debt ceiling also helped sentiment. The Senate passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling late Thursday night, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk. That comes after the House passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Wednesday, just days before the June 5 deadline set by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Lululemon shares popped more than 11% on strong results and a guidance boost, while MongoDB surged 28% on a blowout forecast.
This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL S&P TREE MAP FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
S&P Sectors for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE S&P SECTORS FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Indices for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR INDICES FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Futures Markets as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR FUTURES INDICES AS OF FRIDAY!)
Economic Calendar for the Week Ahead:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ECONOMIC CALENDAR FOR THE WEEK AHEAD!)
Percentage Changes for the Major Indices, WTD, MTD, QTD, YTD as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
S&P Sectors for the Past Week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Pullback/Correction Levels as of Friday's close:
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Major Indices Rally Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for this week:
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Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week:
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Friday's Stock Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #1!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #2!)
A Resilient Labor Market = A Resilient Economy
Another month, another employment surprise. Should we be surprised anymore?
Economists expected payrolls to grow by about 187,000 in May. That’s still a solid job growth number, but a stepdown from what we’ve seen this year through April. However, actual payroll growth beat expectations for the 14th straight month.
The economy created 339,000 jobs in May, close to double expectations. Better still, payroll growth in March and April were revised higher by a total of 93,000!
- March payrolls were revised up by 52,000, from 165,000 to 217,000
- April payroll were revised up by 41,000, from 253,000 to 294,000
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
We’ve got two months of payroll data since the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March, and nothing suggests weakness arising from that banking crisis.
Over the first five months of the year, the economy’s added 1.5 million jobs. That in a nutshell tells you how the economy is doing. For perspective, the average annual payroll growth between 1940 and 2022 was 1.5 million. During the last expansion, 2010-2019, average annual payroll growth was 2.2 million per year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
But what about the unemployment rate?
The unemployment rate did rise from a 50-year low of 3.4% to 3.7%. This does raise some cause for concern but digging through the data suggests it may be noise more than anything else.
It probably helps to understand that the job growth and unemployment rate data come from different sources. The former comes from asking about 120,000+ businesses how many people they hired. The latter comes from asking about 60,000 households about their employment status. No surprise, the latter is noisier.
A big reason for the weak household survey (and rising unemployment rate) is that more than 400,000 people who were self-employed said they were no longer employed. As you can see in the following chart this is very noisy data, but the recent trend seems to be toward lower self-employment. It’s basically reversing the surge we saw in 2021, when self-employment surged. So, what we’re seeing now may simply be normalization of the labor market as more workers move from self-employment to W2 jobs with an employer.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Also, the unemployment rate can be impacted by people leaving the labor force (technically defined as those “not looking for work”) and an aging population. I’ve discussed in prior blogs how we can get around this by looking at the employment-population ratio for prime age workers, i.e. workers aged 25-54 years. This measures the number of people working as a percent of the civilian population. Think of it as the opposite of the unemployment rate, and because we use prime age, you also get around the demographic issue.
The good news is that the prime-age employment-population ratio dropped only a tick, from 80.8% to 80.7%. This still leaves it higher than at any point between 2002 and 2022.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the labor market remains strong and resilient, despite all the recession calls. Perhaps its not as strong as the headline payroll growth number of 339,000 suggests, but any number above 150,000 would be good at this point. And we’re certainly well above that.
In fact, looking at the job growth and employment-population data, this labor market is probably the strongest we’ve seen since the late 1990’s. Our view since the end of last year has been that the economy can avoid a recession this year, and nothing we’ve seen to date suggests we need to reverse that view. Far from it.
June Better in Pre-Election Years
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Since 1971 June has shone brighter on NASDAQ stocks as a rule ranking eighth best with an 0.8% average gain, up 29 of 52 years. This contributes to NASDAQ’s “Best 8 Months” which ends in June. Small caps also fare well in June. Russell 2000 has averaged 0.6% in June since 1979 advancing 63.6% of the time.
June ranks near the bottom on the Dow Jones Industrials just above September since 1950 with an average loss of 0.2%. S&P 500 performs similarly poorly, ranking ninth, but essentially flat (0.02% average gain).
Despite being much stronger S&P 500 pre-election year June ranks fifth best. For the rest it is just sixth best. Average monthly gains in pre-election year June range from DJIA 1.1% to a respectable 2.4% for NASDAQ. Russell 2000 has been the most consistently bullish in pre-election years, up 8 of the last 11 (72.7% of the time).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
The June Swoon?
Stocks did it again, as the S&P 500 gained 0.2% in the month of May, making it now 10 of the past 11 years that stocks finished green in May. Of course, it gained only 0.01% last year and only 0.25% this year, so the recent returns weren’t off the charts by any measure.
Looking specifically at this year, tech added more than 9% in May, thanks to excitement over AI and Nvidia, with communication services and consumer discretionary also in the green, while the other eight sectors were lower.
Specifically, turning to the month of June, stocks historically have hit a bit of trouble here. Since 1950, up 0.03% on average, the fourth worst month of the year. Over the past 20 years, only January and September have been worse and in the past decade, it is again the fourth worst month. The one bit of good news is during a pre-election year is it up 1.5%, the fifth-best month of the year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here’s another chart we’ve shared before, but years that gained big in January (like 2023) tend to see some periods of consolidation in late May/early June, but eventually experience a surge higher into July. Given the flattish overall May, this could be playing out again.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
What if stocks were having a good year heading into June? Since 1950, if the S&P 500 was up more than 8% for the year going into June (like this year), the month of June was up an impressive 1.2% on average versus the average June return of 0.03%, while in a pre-election year the returns jumped to 1.8%. The percent of the time where returns were higher gets better as well, from 54.8% in your average June to nearly 74% if up 8% or more for the year heading into June, to 80% of the time higher if up 8% for the year in a pre-election year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Overall, it has been a very nice run for stocks this year and we remain overweight stocks in the Carson Investment Research House Views. June could potentially cause some volatility, but when all is said and done, we wouldn’t bet against more strength and higher prices in June.
NASDAQ and Russell 2000 Lead June Pre-Election Strength
Over the last 21 years, June has been a rather lackluster month. DJIA, S&P 500 and Russell 1000 have all recorded average losses in the month. Russell 2000 has fared better with a modest average gain. Historically the month has opened respectably, advancing on the first and second trading days.
From there the market then drifted sideways and lower into negative territory just ahead of mid-month. Here the market rallied to create a nice mid-month bulge that quickly evaporated and returned to losses. The brisk, post, mid-month drop is typically followed by a month end rally led by technology and small caps.
Historical performance in pre-election years has been much stronger with all five indexes finishing with average gains. June’s overall pattern in pre-election is similar to the last 21-years pattern with a brief, shallow pullback after a solid start.
In pre-election years the mid-month rally has been much more robust beginning around the sixth trading day and lasting until the fifteenth. Followed by another modest retreat and rally into the end of Q2.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
May and YTD 2023 Asset Class Performance
May 2023 is now behind us, and below is a look at how various asset classes performed during the month using US-listed exchange-traded products as proxies. We also include YTD and YoY total returns.
May was a month of divergence where Tech/AI soared, and the rest of the market fell. Notably, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) gained 7.88% in May while the Dow Jones Dividend ETF (DVY) fell 7.7%. That's a 15 percentage-point spread!
At the sector level, it was a similar story. While the Tech sector (XLK) rose 8.9%, sectors like Energy (XLE), Consumer Staples (XLP), Materials (XLB), and Utilities (XLU) fell more than 5%. In total, 8 of 11 sectors were in the red for the month.
Outside the US, we saw pullbacks in most areas of the world other than Brazil, India, and Japan. China, Hong Kong, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the UK all fell more than 5%.
All of the commodity-related ETFs/ETNs were in the red for May, with oil (USO) and natural gas (UNG) falling the most at more than 10% each.
Finally, fixed-income ETFs also fell in May as interest rates bounced back. The aggregate bond market ETF (AGG) was down 1.14% in May, leaving it up just 2.6% YTD and down 2.2% year-over-year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
How Worried Should We Be About Consumer Debt?
A very common question we get these days is whether we’re concerned about the massive increase in consumer debt.
Short answer: No. Well, not yet anyway. But let’s walk through it in 6 charts.
The New York Federal Reserve (NY Fed) releases a quarterly report on household debt and credit, and the latest one that was released last week came with the headline:
“Household Debt Hits $17.05 Trillion in First Quarter.” But let’s look at the details. Household debt increased by $148 billion in Q1. That translates to a 0.9% increase, which is the slowest quarterly increase in two years. Most of the increase in debt was from mortgage originations ($121 billion) – mortgage debt makes up $12 trillion of the total $17 trillion in debt. The rest was auto loan and student loan balances.
Here’s something interesting: credit card balances were flat in Q1, at $986 billion. The fact that overall balances are higher than where they were in 2019 ($927 billion) should not be surprising given we just experienced a lot of inflation. Prices rose at the fastest pace in 40 years, and so you should expect card balances to increase. However, incomes rose as well.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
When you think debt, the key question is whether households are able to service that debt. A good measure of that is to look at debt service costs as a percent of disposable income. As of Q4 2022, that’s at 9.7%, slightly lower than what it was before the pandemic and well below the historical average.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
There’s even better news: disposable income grew 2.9% in the first quarter of 2023. Significantly higher than the 0.9% increase in total household debt, let alone interest costs!
Part of that includes the large boost to social security income due to inflation adjustments in January. Also, tax brackets were adjusted higher, resulting in more money in household wallets.
But even if you exclude these one-off increases, disposable income growth has been strong between February and April, rising at a 5% annualized pace. In fact, employee compensation by itself has risen at a 3.9% annualized pace over the past three months. Meanwhile, inflation is running just about 3% – which means households are seeing real income gains (adjusted for inflation).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
This is why consumers don’t feel the need to borrow to the extent they did before the pandemic. Credit utilization rates measure credit card balances as a percent of available credit. As you can see in the following chart, utilization rates for both credit cards and home equity lines of credit are well below pre-pandemic averages.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Lack of stress showing in delinquency data as well
Another way to look for signs of consumer stress is to look at the debt delinquency data. As of the first quarter, the NY Fed survey showed that the percent of loan balances that were more than 90 days delinquent was stable around 1.5%. That’s down from 1.9% a year ago, and quite a bit below the 3% average in 2019.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Even third-party collections are at record lows, with just over 5% of consumers having collections against them as of the first quarter. This is down from 6% a year ago and below the 2019 average of 9.2%. The average collection amount per person is $1,316, which is lower than the $1,452 average in late 2019. This is surprising because just with inflation you’d have thought the amount would be higher.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the data on consumer finances is not showing much cause for concern. So, count us in the “not worried” camp. At least, not yet.
Some Good Inflation News
While the market prices in a much higher likelihood of a rate hike at the June meeting, there was actually some decent news on the inflation front today. Starting with the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence report, in this month's update, the inflation expectations component fell to 6.1% from a peak of 7.9% fifteen months ago in March 2022 (first time reading touched 7.9%). Looking at the chart below, this reading was also at 6.1% fifteen months before that first peak. In other words, for all the talk about how inflation has been stickier, the pace of decline in this indicator on the way down has been the same as the pace of increase on the way up.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Another notable report was today's release of the Dallas Fed Manufacturing report. The Prices Paid component of that report showed a decline from 19.5 down to 13.8 which was the lowest reading since July 2020. For the month of May, two of the five components (Empire and Philadelphia) showed modest m/m increases from multi-month lows, and three showed significant declines to multi-month lows. The chart below shows a composite of the Prices Paid component using the z-scores for each of the five individual components going back to 2010. The peak for this component was 19 months ago in November 2021. Unlike the inflation expectations of the Conference Board survey, this reading hasn't declined quite as fast as it increased in the 19 months leading up to the peak, but at -0.2, it is still below its historical average dating back to 2010 and back down to levels it was at right before the COVID shock hit the economy in early 2020.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Home Prices Bounce in Hardest Hit Areas
March data on home prices across the country were released today with updated S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller numbers. Case Shiller home prices had been falling rapidly in many of the twenty cities tracked, but in March we actually saw a pretty big month-over-month bounce in some of the hardest-hit areas like San Diego, San Francisco, LA, Denver, and Phoenix. Some cities still saw declines, however. Las Vegas saw a m/m drop of 0.93%, while Miami fell 0.41%, and Seattle fell 0.28%.
On a year-over-year basis, Miami is still up the most with a gain of 10.86%. As shown in the table below, Miami home prices are up 59.87% from pre-COVID levels in February 2020, and they're only down 2.9% from post-COVID highs. Only Tampa is up more than Miami from pre-COVID levels (+61.04%), but Tampa prices are down more from their post-COVID highs (-4.70%) than Miami (-2.90%).
Four cities are down more than 10% from their post-COVID highs: San Diego (-10.12%), Las Vegas (-10.95%), San Francisco (-16.35%), and Seattle (-16.50%). New York is down the least from post-COVID highs of any city tracked at just -2.9%.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Below we include charts of home price levels across all 20 cities tracked by Case Shiller along with the three composite indices. We've included a vertical red line on each chart to highlight pre-COVID levels. When looking through the charts, you can see this month's small bounce back in most cities after a 6-9 month pullback in prices from peaks seen early last year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
STOCK MARKET VIDEO: Stock Market Analysis Video for Week Ending June 5th, 2023
(CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!)
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)STOCK MARKET VIDEO: ShadowTrader Video Weekly 6/2/23
([CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!]())
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)($NIO $GTLB $GME $CIEN $DOCU $SAIC $ASO $SJM $CXM $THO $OLLI $MOMO $CBRL $FERG $TTC $HQY $CPB $PLAY $QMCO $FCEL $LOVE $ABM $CNM $HTOO $TCOM $JOAN $UNFI $SFIX $CHS $GIII $SIG $SMAR $PL $ZFOX $HYZN $VRA $CASY $MTN $SMTC $ALYA $DBI $SCWX $JILL $OESX $BSE $REVG $VBNK $VRNT $RENT $HCP)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S MOST NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S HIGHEST VOLATILITY EARNINGS RELEASES!)
([CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!]())
(N/A.)
Monday 6.5.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Monday 6.5.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Friday 6.9.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)
Friday 6.9.23 After Market Close:
([CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!]())
(NONE.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.) (T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
DISCUSS!
What are you all watching for in this upcoming trading week?Join the Official Reddit Stock Market Chat Discord Server HERE!
2023.06.02 23:39 bigbear0083 Wall Street Week Ahead for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023
Good Friday evening to all of you here on EarningsWhispers! I hope everyone on this sub made out pretty nicely in the market this past week, and are ready for the new trading week ahead. :)
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Here is the list of notable tickers reporting earnings in this upcoming trading week ahead-
Here is the full list of companies report earnings for this upcoming trading week ahead which includes the date/time of release & consensus estimates courtesy of Earnings Whispers:
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a great new trading week ahead EarningsWhispers. :)
submitted by bigbear0083 to EarningsWhispers [link] [comments]
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Dow leaps 700 points on hot jobs report, Nasdaq notches sixth straight winning week: Live updates - (Source)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged Friday as traders cheered a strong jobs report and the passage of a debt ceiling bill that averts a U.S. default.
The 30-stock Dow jumped 701.19 points, or 2.12%, to end at 33,762.76 — its best day since January. The S&P 500 climbed 1.45% to close at 4,282.37. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.07% to 13,240.77, reaching its highest level since April 2022 during the session.
With Friday’s gains, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished the holiday-shortened trading week about 1.8% and 2% higher, respectively. The Dow’s Friday advance pushed it into positive territory for the week, finishing up around 2%. The Nasdaq notched its sixth straight week higher, a streak length not seen for the technology-heavy index since 2020.
Nonfarm payrolls grew much more than expected in May, rising 339,000. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a relatively modest 190,000 increase. It marked the 29th straight month of positive job growth.
Recently strong employment data had been pressuring stocks on the notion it would keep the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. But Friday data also showed average hourly earnings rose less than economists expected year over year, while the unemployment rate was higher than anticipated.
Both data points have given investors hope that the Fed could pause its interest rate hike campaign at the policy meeting later this month, according to Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.
“The so-called Goldilocks has entered the house,” Sandven said. “Clearly, on the bullish side, there are signs that inflation is starting to wane, speculation that the Fed is going to move into pause mode, increasing the likelihood of a soft landing.”
Easing concerns around the U.S. debt ceiling also helped sentiment. The Senate passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling late Thursday night, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk. That comes after the House passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Wednesday, just days before the June 5 deadline set by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Lululemon shares popped more than 11% on strong results and a guidance boost, while MongoDB surged 28% on a blowout forecast.
This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL S&P TREE MAP FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
S&P Sectors for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE S&P SECTORS FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Indices for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR INDICES FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Futures Markets as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR FUTURES INDICES AS OF FRIDAY!)
Economic Calendar for the Week Ahead:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ECONOMIC CALENDAR FOR THE WEEK AHEAD!)
Percentage Changes for the Major Indices, WTD, MTD, QTD, YTD as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
S&P Sectors for the Past Week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Pullback/Correction Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Rally Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Friday's Stock Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #1!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #2!)
A Resilient Labor Market = A Resilient Economy
Another month, another employment surprise. Should we be surprised anymore?
Economists expected payrolls to grow by about 187,000 in May. That’s still a solid job growth number, but a stepdown from what we’ve seen this year through April. However, actual payroll growth beat expectations for the 14th straight month.
The economy created 339,000 jobs in May, close to double expectations. Better still, payroll growth in March and April were revised higher by a total of 93,000!
- March payrolls were revised up by 52,000, from 165,000 to 217,000
- April payroll were revised up by 41,000, from 253,000 to 294,000
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
We’ve got two months of payroll data since the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March, and nothing suggests weakness arising from that banking crisis.
Over the first five months of the year, the economy’s added 1.5 million jobs. That in a nutshell tells you how the economy is doing. For perspective, the average annual payroll growth between 1940 and 2022 was 1.5 million. During the last expansion, 2010-2019, average annual payroll growth was 2.2 million per year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
But what about the unemployment rate?
The unemployment rate did rise from a 50-year low of 3.4% to 3.7%. This does raise some cause for concern but digging through the data suggests it may be noise more than anything else.
It probably helps to understand that the job growth and unemployment rate data come from different sources. The former comes from asking about 120,000+ businesses how many people they hired. The latter comes from asking about 60,000 households about their employment status. No surprise, the latter is noisier.
A big reason for the weak household survey (and rising unemployment rate) is that more than 400,000 people who were self-employed said they were no longer employed. As you can see in the following chart this is very noisy data, but the recent trend seems to be toward lower self-employment. It’s basically reversing the surge we saw in 2021, when self-employment surged. So, what we’re seeing now may simply be normalization of the labor market as more workers move from self-employment to W2 jobs with an employer.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Also, the unemployment rate can be impacted by people leaving the labor force (technically defined as those “not looking for work”) and an aging population. I’ve discussed in prior blogs how we can get around this by looking at the employment-population ratio for prime age workers, i.e. workers aged 25-54 years. This measures the number of people working as a percent of the civilian population. Think of it as the opposite of the unemployment rate, and because we use prime age, you also get around the demographic issue.
The good news is that the prime-age employment-population ratio dropped only a tick, from 80.8% to 80.7%. This still leaves it higher than at any point between 2002 and 2022.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the labor market remains strong and resilient, despite all the recession calls. Perhaps its not as strong as the headline payroll growth number of 339,000 suggests, but any number above 150,000 would be good at this point. And we’re certainly well above that.
In fact, looking at the job growth and employment-population data, this labor market is probably the strongest we’ve seen since the late 1990’s. Our view since the end of last year has been that the economy can avoid a recession this year, and nothing we’ve seen to date suggests we need to reverse that view. Far from it.
June Better in Pre-Election Years
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Since 1971 June has shone brighter on NASDAQ stocks as a rule ranking eighth best with an 0.8% average gain, up 29 of 52 years. This contributes to NASDAQ’s “Best 8 Months” which ends in June. Small caps also fare well in June. Russell 2000 has averaged 0.6% in June since 1979 advancing 63.6% of the time.
June ranks near the bottom on the Dow Jones Industrials just above September since 1950 with an average loss of 0.2%. S&P 500 performs similarly poorly, ranking ninth, but essentially flat (0.02% average gain).
Despite being much stronger S&P 500 pre-election year June ranks fifth best. For the rest it is just sixth best. Average monthly gains in pre-election year June range from DJIA 1.1% to a respectable 2.4% for NASDAQ. Russell 2000 has been the most consistently bullish in pre-election years, up 8 of the last 11 (72.7% of the time).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
The June Swoon?
Stocks did it again, as the S&P 500 gained 0.2% in the month of May, making it now 10 of the past 11 years that stocks finished green in May. Of course, it gained only 0.01% last year and only 0.25% this year, so the recent returns weren’t off the charts by any measure.
Looking specifically at this year, tech added more than 9% in May, thanks to excitement over AI and Nvidia, with communication services and consumer discretionary also in the green, while the other eight sectors were lower.
Specifically, turning to the month of June, stocks historically have hit a bit of trouble here. Since 1950, up 0.03% on average, the fourth worst month of the year. Over the past 20 years, only January and September have been worse and in the past decade, it is again the fourth worst month. The one bit of good news is during a pre-election year is it up 1.5%, the fifth-best month of the year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here’s another chart we’ve shared before, but years that gained big in January (like 2023) tend to see some periods of consolidation in late May/early June, but eventually experience a surge higher into July. Given the flattish overall May, this could be playing out again.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
What if stocks were having a good year heading into June? Since 1950, if the S&P 500 was up more than 8% for the year going into June (like this year), the month of June was up an impressive 1.2% on average versus the average June return of 0.03%, while in a pre-election year the returns jumped to 1.8%. The percent of the time where returns were higher gets better as well, from 54.8% in your average June to nearly 74% if up 8% or more for the year heading into June, to 80% of the time higher if up 8% for the year in a pre-election year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Overall, it has been a very nice run for stocks this year and we remain overweight stocks in the Carson Investment Research House Views. June could potentially cause some volatility, but when all is said and done, we wouldn’t bet against more strength and higher prices in June.
NASDAQ and Russell 2000 Lead June Pre-Election Strength
Over the last 21 years, June has been a rather lackluster month. DJIA, S&P 500 and Russell 1000 have all recorded average losses in the month. Russell 2000 has fared better with a modest average gain. Historically the month has opened respectably, advancing on the first and second trading days.
From there the market then drifted sideways and lower into negative territory just ahead of mid-month. Here the market rallied to create a nice mid-month bulge that quickly evaporated and returned to losses. The brisk, post, mid-month drop is typically followed by a month end rally led by technology and small caps.
Historical performance in pre-election years has been much stronger with all five indexes finishing with average gains. June’s overall pattern in pre-election is similar to the last 21-years pattern with a brief, shallow pullback after a solid start.
In pre-election years the mid-month rally has been much more robust beginning around the sixth trading day and lasting until the fifteenth. Followed by another modest retreat and rally into the end of Q2.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
May and YTD 2023 Asset Class Performance
May 2023 is now behind us, and below is a look at how various asset classes performed during the month using US-listed exchange-traded products as proxies. We also include YTD and YoY total returns.
May was a month of divergence where Tech/AI soared, and the rest of the market fell. Notably, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) gained 7.88% in May while the Dow Jones Dividend ETF (DVY) fell 7.7%. That's a 15 percentage-point spread!
At the sector level, it was a similar story. While the Tech sector (XLK) rose 8.9%, sectors like Energy (XLE), Consumer Staples (XLP), Materials (XLB), and Utilities (XLU) fell more than 5%. In total, 8 of 11 sectors were in the red for the month.
Outside the US, we saw pullbacks in most areas of the world other than Brazil, India, and Japan. China, Hong Kong, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the UK all fell more than 5%.
All of the commodity-related ETFs/ETNs were in the red for May, with oil (USO) and natural gas (UNG) falling the most at more than 10% each.
Finally, fixed-income ETFs also fell in May as interest rates bounced back. The aggregate bond market ETF (AGG) was down 1.14% in May, leaving it up just 2.6% YTD and down 2.2% year-over-year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
How Worried Should We Be About Consumer Debt?
A very common question we get these days is whether we’re concerned about the massive increase in consumer debt.
Short answer: No. Well, not yet anyway. But let’s walk through it in 6 charts.
The New York Federal Reserve (NY Fed) releases a quarterly report on household debt and credit, and the latest one that was released last week came with the headline:
“Household Debt Hits $17.05 Trillion in First Quarter.” But let’s look at the details. Household debt increased by $148 billion in Q1. That translates to a 0.9% increase, which is the slowest quarterly increase in two years. Most of the increase in debt was from mortgage originations ($121 billion) – mortgage debt makes up $12 trillion of the total $17 trillion in debt. The rest was auto loan and student loan balances.
Here’s something interesting: credit card balances were flat in Q1, at $986 billion. The fact that overall balances are higher than where they were in 2019 ($927 billion) should not be surprising given we just experienced a lot of inflation. Prices rose at the fastest pace in 40 years, and so you should expect card balances to increase. However, incomes rose as well.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
When you think debt, the key question is whether households are able to service that debt. A good measure of that is to look at debt service costs as a percent of disposable income. As of Q4 2022, that’s at 9.7%, slightly lower than what it was before the pandemic and well below the historical average.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
There’s even better news: disposable income grew 2.9% in the first quarter of 2023. Significantly higher than the 0.9% increase in total household debt, let alone interest costs!
Part of that includes the large boost to social security income due to inflation adjustments in January. Also, tax brackets were adjusted higher, resulting in more money in household wallets.
But even if you exclude these one-off increases, disposable income growth has been strong between February and April, rising at a 5% annualized pace. In fact, employee compensation by itself has risen at a 3.9% annualized pace over the past three months. Meanwhile, inflation is running just about 3% – which means households are seeing real income gains (adjusted for inflation).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
This is why consumers don’t feel the need to borrow to the extent they did before the pandemic. Credit utilization rates measure credit card balances as a percent of available credit. As you can see in the following chart, utilization rates for both credit cards and home equity lines of credit are well below pre-pandemic averages.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Lack of stress showing in delinquency data as well
Another way to look for signs of consumer stress is to look at the debt delinquency data. As of the first quarter, the NY Fed survey showed that the percent of loan balances that were more than 90 days delinquent was stable around 1.5%. That’s down from 1.9% a year ago, and quite a bit below the 3% average in 2019.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Even third-party collections are at record lows, with just over 5% of consumers having collections against them as of the first quarter. This is down from 6% a year ago and below the 2019 average of 9.2%. The average collection amount per person is $1,316, which is lower than the $1,452 average in late 2019. This is surprising because just with inflation you’d have thought the amount would be higher.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the data on consumer finances is not showing much cause for concern. So, count us in the “not worried” camp. At least, not yet.
Some Good Inflation News
While the market prices in a much higher likelihood of a rate hike at the June meeting, there was actually some decent news on the inflation front today. Starting with the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence report, in this month's update, the inflation expectations component fell to 6.1% from a peak of 7.9% fifteen months ago in March 2022 (first time reading touched 7.9%). Looking at the chart below, this reading was also at 6.1% fifteen months before that first peak. In other words, for all the talk about how inflation has been stickier, the pace of decline in this indicator on the way down has been the same as the pace of increase on the way up.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Another notable report was today's release of the Dallas Fed Manufacturing report. The Prices Paid component of that report showed a decline from 19.5 down to 13.8 which was the lowest reading since July 2020. For the month of May, two of the five components (Empire and Philadelphia) showed modest m/m increases from multi-month lows, and three showed significant declines to multi-month lows. The chart below shows a composite of the Prices Paid component using the z-scores for each of the five individual components going back to 2010. The peak for this component was 19 months ago in November 2021. Unlike the inflation expectations of the Conference Board survey, this reading hasn't declined quite as fast as it increased in the 19 months leading up to the peak, but at -0.2, it is still below its historical average dating back to 2010 and back down to levels it was at right before the COVID shock hit the economy in early 2020.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Home Prices Bounce in Hardest Hit Areas
March data on home prices across the country were released today with updated S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller numbers. Case Shiller home prices had been falling rapidly in many of the twenty cities tracked, but in March we actually saw a pretty big month-over-month bounce in some of the hardest-hit areas like San Diego, San Francisco, LA, Denver, and Phoenix. Some cities still saw declines, however. Las Vegas saw a m/m drop of 0.93%, while Miami fell 0.41%, and Seattle fell 0.28%.
On a year-over-year basis, Miami is still up the most with a gain of 10.86%. As shown in the table below, Miami home prices are up 59.87% from pre-COVID levels in February 2020, and they're only down 2.9% from post-COVID highs. Only Tampa is up more than Miami from pre-COVID levels (+61.04%), but Tampa prices are down more from their post-COVID highs (-4.70%) than Miami (-2.90%).
Four cities are down more than 10% from their post-COVID highs: San Diego (-10.12%), Las Vegas (-10.95%), San Francisco (-16.35%), and Seattle (-16.50%). New York is down the least from post-COVID highs of any city tracked at just -2.9%.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Below we include charts of home price levels across all 20 cities tracked by Case Shiller along with the three composite indices. We've included a vertical red line on each chart to highlight pre-COVID levels. When looking through the charts, you can see this month's small bounce back in most cities after a 6-9 month pullback in prices from peaks seen early last year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
STOCK MARKET VIDEO: Stock Market Analysis Video for Week Ending June 5th, 2023
(CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!)
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)STOCK MARKET VIDEO: ShadowTrader Video Weekly 6/2/23
([CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!]())
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)($NIO $GTLB $GME $CIEN $DOCU $SAIC $ASO $SJM $CXM $THO $OLLI $MOMO $CBRL $FERG $TTC $HQY $CPB $PLAY $QMCO $FCEL $LOVE $ABM $CNM $HTOO $TCOM $JOAN $UNFI $SFIX $CHS $GIII $SIG $SMAR $PL $ZFOX $HYZN $VRA $CASY $MTN $SMTC $ALYA $DBI $SCWX $JILL $OESX $BSE $REVG $VBNK $VRNT $RENT $HCP)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S MOST NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S HIGHEST VOLATILITY EARNINGS RELEASES!)
([CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!]())
(N/A.)
Monday 6.5.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Monday 6.5.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Friday 6.9.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)
Friday 6.9.23 After Market Close:
([CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!]())
(NONE.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.) (T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
DISCUSS!
What are you all watching for in this upcoming trading week?Join the Official Reddit Stock Market Chat Discord Server HERE!
2023.06.02 23:38 bigbear0083 Wall Street Week Ahead for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023
Good Friday evening to all of you here on StocksMarket! I hope everyone on this sub made out pretty nicely in the market this past week, and are ready for the new trading week ahead. :)
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Here is the list of notable tickers reporting earnings in this upcoming trading week ahead-
Here is the full list of companies report earnings for this upcoming trading week ahead which includes the date/time of release & consensus estimates courtesy of Earnings Whispers:
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a great new trading week ahead StocksMarket. :)
submitted by bigbear0083 to StocksMarket [link] [comments]
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Dow leaps 700 points on hot jobs report, Nasdaq notches sixth straight winning week: Live updates - (Source)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged Friday as traders cheered a strong jobs report and the passage of a debt ceiling bill that averts a U.S. default.
The 30-stock Dow jumped 701.19 points, or 2.12%, to end at 33,762.76 — its best day since January. The S&P 500 climbed 1.45% to close at 4,282.37. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.07% to 13,240.77, reaching its highest level since April 2022 during the session.
With Friday’s gains, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished the holiday-shortened trading week about 1.8% and 2% higher, respectively. The Dow’s Friday advance pushed it into positive territory for the week, finishing up around 2%. The Nasdaq notched its sixth straight week higher, a streak length not seen for the technology-heavy index since 2020.
Nonfarm payrolls grew much more than expected in May, rising 339,000. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a relatively modest 190,000 increase. It marked the 29th straight month of positive job growth.
Recently strong employment data had been pressuring stocks on the notion it would keep the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. But Friday data also showed average hourly earnings rose less than economists expected year over year, while the unemployment rate was higher than anticipated.
Both data points have given investors hope that the Fed could pause its interest rate hike campaign at the policy meeting later this month, according to Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.
“The so-called Goldilocks has entered the house,” Sandven said. “Clearly, on the bullish side, there are signs that inflation is starting to wane, speculation that the Fed is going to move into pause mode, increasing the likelihood of a soft landing.”
Easing concerns around the U.S. debt ceiling also helped sentiment. The Senate passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling late Thursday night, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk. That comes after the House passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Wednesday, just days before the June 5 deadline set by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Lululemon shares popped more than 11% on strong results and a guidance boost, while MongoDB surged 28% on a blowout forecast.
This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL S&P TREE MAP FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
S&P Sectors for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE S&P SECTORS FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Indices for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR INDICES FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Futures Markets as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR FUTURES INDICES AS OF FRIDAY!)
Economic Calendar for the Week Ahead:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ECONOMIC CALENDAR FOR THE WEEK AHEAD!)
Percentage Changes for the Major Indices, WTD, MTD, QTD, YTD as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
S&P Sectors for the Past Week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Pullback/Correction Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Rally Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Friday's Stock Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #1!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #2!)
A Resilient Labor Market = A Resilient Economy
Another month, another employment surprise. Should we be surprised anymore?
Economists expected payrolls to grow by about 187,000 in May. That’s still a solid job growth number, but a stepdown from what we’ve seen this year through April. However, actual payroll growth beat expectations for the 14th straight month.
The economy created 339,000 jobs in May, close to double expectations. Better still, payroll growth in March and April were revised higher by a total of 93,000!
- March payrolls were revised up by 52,000, from 165,000 to 217,000
- April payroll were revised up by 41,000, from 253,000 to 294,000
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
We’ve got two months of payroll data since the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March, and nothing suggests weakness arising from that banking crisis.
Over the first five months of the year, the economy’s added 1.5 million jobs. That in a nutshell tells you how the economy is doing. For perspective, the average annual payroll growth between 1940 and 2022 was 1.5 million. During the last expansion, 2010-2019, average annual payroll growth was 2.2 million per year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
But what about the unemployment rate?
The unemployment rate did rise from a 50-year low of 3.4% to 3.7%. This does raise some cause for concern but digging through the data suggests it may be noise more than anything else.
It probably helps to understand that the job growth and unemployment rate data come from different sources. The former comes from asking about 120,000+ businesses how many people they hired. The latter comes from asking about 60,000 households about their employment status. No surprise, the latter is noisier.
A big reason for the weak household survey (and rising unemployment rate) is that more than 400,000 people who were self-employed said they were no longer employed. As you can see in the following chart this is very noisy data, but the recent trend seems to be toward lower self-employment. It’s basically reversing the surge we saw in 2021, when self-employment surged. So, what we’re seeing now may simply be normalization of the labor market as more workers move from self-employment to W2 jobs with an employer.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Also, the unemployment rate can be impacted by people leaving the labor force (technically defined as those “not looking for work”) and an aging population. I’ve discussed in prior blogs how we can get around this by looking at the employment-population ratio for prime age workers, i.e. workers aged 25-54 years. This measures the number of people working as a percent of the civilian population. Think of it as the opposite of the unemployment rate, and because we use prime age, you also get around the demographic issue.
The good news is that the prime-age employment-population ratio dropped only a tick, from 80.8% to 80.7%. This still leaves it higher than at any point between 2002 and 2022.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the labor market remains strong and resilient, despite all the recession calls. Perhaps its not as strong as the headline payroll growth number of 339,000 suggests, but any number above 150,000 would be good at this point. And we’re certainly well above that.
In fact, looking at the job growth and employment-population data, this labor market is probably the strongest we’ve seen since the late 1990’s. Our view since the end of last year has been that the economy can avoid a recession this year, and nothing we’ve seen to date suggests we need to reverse that view. Far from it.
June Better in Pre-Election Years
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Since 1971 June has shone brighter on NASDAQ stocks as a rule ranking eighth best with an 0.8% average gain, up 29 of 52 years. This contributes to NASDAQ’s “Best 8 Months” which ends in June. Small caps also fare well in June. Russell 2000 has averaged 0.6% in June since 1979 advancing 63.6% of the time.
June ranks near the bottom on the Dow Jones Industrials just above September since 1950 with an average loss of 0.2%. S&P 500 performs similarly poorly, ranking ninth, but essentially flat (0.02% average gain).
Despite being much stronger S&P 500 pre-election year June ranks fifth best. For the rest it is just sixth best. Average monthly gains in pre-election year June range from DJIA 1.1% to a respectable 2.4% for NASDAQ. Russell 2000 has been the most consistently bullish in pre-election years, up 8 of the last 11 (72.7% of the time).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
The June Swoon?
Stocks did it again, as the S&P 500 gained 0.2% in the month of May, making it now 10 of the past 11 years that stocks finished green in May. Of course, it gained only 0.01% last year and only 0.25% this year, so the recent returns weren’t off the charts by any measure.
Looking specifically at this year, tech added more than 9% in May, thanks to excitement over AI and Nvidia, with communication services and consumer discretionary also in the green, while the other eight sectors were lower.
Specifically, turning to the month of June, stocks historically have hit a bit of trouble here. Since 1950, up 0.03% on average, the fourth worst month of the year. Over the past 20 years, only January and September have been worse and in the past decade, it is again the fourth worst month. The one bit of good news is during a pre-election year is it up 1.5%, the fifth-best month of the year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here’s another chart we’ve shared before, but years that gained big in January (like 2023) tend to see some periods of consolidation in late May/early June, but eventually experience a surge higher into July. Given the flattish overall May, this could be playing out again.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
What if stocks were having a good year heading into June? Since 1950, if the S&P 500 was up more than 8% for the year going into June (like this year), the month of June was up an impressive 1.2% on average versus the average June return of 0.03%, while in a pre-election year the returns jumped to 1.8%. The percent of the time where returns were higher gets better as well, from 54.8% in your average June to nearly 74% if up 8% or more for the year heading into June, to 80% of the time higher if up 8% for the year in a pre-election year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Overall, it has been a very nice run for stocks this year and we remain overweight stocks in the Carson Investment Research House Views. June could potentially cause some volatility, but when all is said and done, we wouldn’t bet against more strength and higher prices in June.
NASDAQ and Russell 2000 Lead June Pre-Election Strength
Over the last 21 years, June has been a rather lackluster month. DJIA, S&P 500 and Russell 1000 have all recorded average losses in the month. Russell 2000 has fared better with a modest average gain. Historically the month has opened respectably, advancing on the first and second trading days.
From there the market then drifted sideways and lower into negative territory just ahead of mid-month. Here the market rallied to create a nice mid-month bulge that quickly evaporated and returned to losses. The brisk, post, mid-month drop is typically followed by a month end rally led by technology and small caps.
Historical performance in pre-election years has been much stronger with all five indexes finishing with average gains. June’s overall pattern in pre-election is similar to the last 21-years pattern with a brief, shallow pullback after a solid start.
In pre-election years the mid-month rally has been much more robust beginning around the sixth trading day and lasting until the fifteenth. Followed by another modest retreat and rally into the end of Q2.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
May and YTD 2023 Asset Class Performance
May 2023 is now behind us, and below is a look at how various asset classes performed during the month using US-listed exchange-traded products as proxies. We also include YTD and YoY total returns.
May was a month of divergence where Tech/AI soared, and the rest of the market fell. Notably, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) gained 7.88% in May while the Dow Jones Dividend ETF (DVY) fell 7.7%. That's a 15 percentage-point spread!
At the sector level, it was a similar story. While the Tech sector (XLK) rose 8.9%, sectors like Energy (XLE), Consumer Staples (XLP), Materials (XLB), and Utilities (XLU) fell more than 5%. In total, 8 of 11 sectors were in the red for the month.
Outside the US, we saw pullbacks in most areas of the world other than Brazil, India, and Japan. China, Hong Kong, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the UK all fell more than 5%.
All of the commodity-related ETFs/ETNs were in the red for May, with oil (USO) and natural gas (UNG) falling the most at more than 10% each.
Finally, fixed-income ETFs also fell in May as interest rates bounced back. The aggregate bond market ETF (AGG) was down 1.14% in May, leaving it up just 2.6% YTD and down 2.2% year-over-year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
How Worried Should We Be About Consumer Debt?
A very common question we get these days is whether we’re concerned about the massive increase in consumer debt.
Short answer: No. Well, not yet anyway. But let’s walk through it in 6 charts.
The New York Federal Reserve (NY Fed) releases a quarterly report on household debt and credit, and the latest one that was released last week came with the headline:
“Household Debt Hits $17.05 Trillion in First Quarter.” But let’s look at the details. Household debt increased by $148 billion in Q1. That translates to a 0.9% increase, which is the slowest quarterly increase in two years. Most of the increase in debt was from mortgage originations ($121 billion) – mortgage debt makes up $12 trillion of the total $17 trillion in debt. The rest was auto loan and student loan balances.
Here’s something interesting: credit card balances were flat in Q1, at $986 billion. The fact that overall balances are higher than where they were in 2019 ($927 billion) should not be surprising given we just experienced a lot of inflation. Prices rose at the fastest pace in 40 years, and so you should expect card balances to increase. However, incomes rose as well.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
When you think debt, the key question is whether households are able to service that debt. A good measure of that is to look at debt service costs as a percent of disposable income. As of Q4 2022, that’s at 9.7%, slightly lower than what it was before the pandemic and well below the historical average.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
There’s even better news: disposable income grew 2.9% in the first quarter of 2023. Significantly higher than the 0.9% increase in total household debt, let alone interest costs!
Part of that includes the large boost to social security income due to inflation adjustments in January. Also, tax brackets were adjusted higher, resulting in more money in household wallets.
But even if you exclude these one-off increases, disposable income growth has been strong between February and April, rising at a 5% annualized pace. In fact, employee compensation by itself has risen at a 3.9% annualized pace over the past three months. Meanwhile, inflation is running just about 3% – which means households are seeing real income gains (adjusted for inflation).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
This is why consumers don’t feel the need to borrow to the extent they did before the pandemic. Credit utilization rates measure credit card balances as a percent of available credit. As you can see in the following chart, utilization rates for both credit cards and home equity lines of credit are well below pre-pandemic averages.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Lack of stress showing in delinquency data as well
Another way to look for signs of consumer stress is to look at the debt delinquency data. As of the first quarter, the NY Fed survey showed that the percent of loan balances that were more than 90 days delinquent was stable around 1.5%. That’s down from 1.9% a year ago, and quite a bit below the 3% average in 2019.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Even third-party collections are at record lows, with just over 5% of consumers having collections against them as of the first quarter. This is down from 6% a year ago and below the 2019 average of 9.2%. The average collection amount per person is $1,316, which is lower than the $1,452 average in late 2019. This is surprising because just with inflation you’d have thought the amount would be higher.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the data on consumer finances is not showing much cause for concern. So, count us in the “not worried” camp. At least, not yet.
Some Good Inflation News
While the market prices in a much higher likelihood of a rate hike at the June meeting, there was actually some decent news on the inflation front today. Starting with the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence report, in this month's update, the inflation expectations component fell to 6.1% from a peak of 7.9% fifteen months ago in March 2022 (first time reading touched 7.9%). Looking at the chart below, this reading was also at 6.1% fifteen months before that first peak. In other words, for all the talk about how inflation has been stickier, the pace of decline in this indicator on the way down has been the same as the pace of increase on the way up.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Another notable report was today's release of the Dallas Fed Manufacturing report. The Prices Paid component of that report showed a decline from 19.5 down to 13.8 which was the lowest reading since July 2020. For the month of May, two of the five components (Empire and Philadelphia) showed modest m/m increases from multi-month lows, and three showed significant declines to multi-month lows. The chart below shows a composite of the Prices Paid component using the z-scores for each of the five individual components going back to 2010. The peak for this component was 19 months ago in November 2021. Unlike the inflation expectations of the Conference Board survey, this reading hasn't declined quite as fast as it increased in the 19 months leading up to the peak, but at -0.2, it is still below its historical average dating back to 2010 and back down to levels it was at right before the COVID shock hit the economy in early 2020.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Home Prices Bounce in Hardest Hit Areas
March data on home prices across the country were released today with updated S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller numbers. Case Shiller home prices had been falling rapidly in many of the twenty cities tracked, but in March we actually saw a pretty big month-over-month bounce in some of the hardest-hit areas like San Diego, San Francisco, LA, Denver, and Phoenix. Some cities still saw declines, however. Las Vegas saw a m/m drop of 0.93%, while Miami fell 0.41%, and Seattle fell 0.28%.
On a year-over-year basis, Miami is still up the most with a gain of 10.86%. As shown in the table below, Miami home prices are up 59.87% from pre-COVID levels in February 2020, and they're only down 2.9% from post-COVID highs. Only Tampa is up more than Miami from pre-COVID levels (+61.04%), but Tampa prices are down more from their post-COVID highs (-4.70%) than Miami (-2.90%).
Four cities are down more than 10% from their post-COVID highs: San Diego (-10.12%), Las Vegas (-10.95%), San Francisco (-16.35%), and Seattle (-16.50%). New York is down the least from post-COVID highs of any city tracked at just -2.9%.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Below we include charts of home price levels across all 20 cities tracked by Case Shiller along with the three composite indices. We've included a vertical red line on each chart to highlight pre-COVID levels. When looking through the charts, you can see this month's small bounce back in most cities after a 6-9 month pullback in prices from peaks seen early last year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
STOCK MARKET VIDEO: Stock Market Analysis Video for Week Ending June 5th, 2023
(CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!)
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)STOCK MARKET VIDEO: ShadowTrader Video Weekly 6/2/23
([CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!]())
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)($NIO $GTLB $GME $CIEN $DOCU $SAIC $ASO $SJM $CXM $THO $OLLI $MOMO $CBRL $FERG $TTC $HQY $CPB $PLAY $QMCO $FCEL $LOVE $ABM $CNM $HTOO $TCOM $JOAN $UNFI $SFIX $CHS $GIII $SIG $SMAR $PL $ZFOX $HYZN $VRA $CASY $MTN $SMTC $ALYA $DBI $SCWX $JILL $OESX $BSE $REVG $VBNK $VRNT $RENT $HCP)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S MOST NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S HIGHEST VOLATILITY EARNINGS RELEASES!)
([CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!]())
(N/A.)
Monday 6.5.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Monday 6.5.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Friday 6.9.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)
Friday 6.9.23 After Market Close:
([CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!]())
(NONE.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.) (T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
DISCUSS!
What are you all watching for in this upcoming trading week?Join the Official Reddit Stock Market Chat Discord Server HERE!
2023.06.02 23:37 bigbear0083 Wall Street Week Ahead for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023
Good Friday evening to all of you here on FinancialMarket! I hope everyone on this sub made out pretty nicely in the market this past week, and are ready for the new trading week ahead. :)
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Here is the list of notable tickers reporting earnings in this upcoming trading week ahead-
Here is the full list of companies report earnings for this upcoming trading week ahead which includes the date/time of release & consensus estimates courtesy of Earnings Whispers:
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a great new trading week ahead FinancialMarket. :)
submitted by bigbear0083 to FinancialMarket [link] [comments]
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Dow leaps 700 points on hot jobs report, Nasdaq notches sixth straight winning week: Live updates - (Source)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged Friday as traders cheered a strong jobs report and the passage of a debt ceiling bill that averts a U.S. default.
The 30-stock Dow jumped 701.19 points, or 2.12%, to end at 33,762.76 — its best day since January. The S&P 500 climbed 1.45% to close at 4,282.37. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.07% to 13,240.77, reaching its highest level since April 2022 during the session.
With Friday’s gains, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished the holiday-shortened trading week about 1.8% and 2% higher, respectively. The Dow’s Friday advance pushed it into positive territory for the week, finishing up around 2%. The Nasdaq notched its sixth straight week higher, a streak length not seen for the technology-heavy index since 2020.
Nonfarm payrolls grew much more than expected in May, rising 339,000. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a relatively modest 190,000 increase. It marked the 29th straight month of positive job growth.
Recently strong employment data had been pressuring stocks on the notion it would keep the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. But Friday data also showed average hourly earnings rose less than economists expected year over year, while the unemployment rate was higher than anticipated.
Both data points have given investors hope that the Fed could pause its interest rate hike campaign at the policy meeting later this month, according to Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.
“The so-called Goldilocks has entered the house,” Sandven said. “Clearly, on the bullish side, there are signs that inflation is starting to wane, speculation that the Fed is going to move into pause mode, increasing the likelihood of a soft landing.”
Easing concerns around the U.S. debt ceiling also helped sentiment. The Senate passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling late Thursday night, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk. That comes after the House passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Wednesday, just days before the June 5 deadline set by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Lululemon shares popped more than 11% on strong results and a guidance boost, while MongoDB surged 28% on a blowout forecast.
This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL S&P TREE MAP FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
S&P Sectors for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE S&P SECTORS FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Indices for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR INDICES FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Futures Markets as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR FUTURES INDICES AS OF FRIDAY!)
Economic Calendar for the Week Ahead:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ECONOMIC CALENDAR FOR THE WEEK AHEAD!)
Percentage Changes for the Major Indices, WTD, MTD, QTD, YTD as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
S&P Sectors for the Past Week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Pullback/Correction Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Rally Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Friday's Stock Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #1!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #2!)
A Resilient Labor Market = A Resilient Economy
Another month, another employment surprise. Should we be surprised anymore?
Economists expected payrolls to grow by about 187,000 in May. That’s still a solid job growth number, but a stepdown from what we’ve seen this year through April. However, actual payroll growth beat expectations for the 14th straight month.
The economy created 339,000 jobs in May, close to double expectations. Better still, payroll growth in March and April were revised higher by a total of 93,000!
- March payrolls were revised up by 52,000, from 165,000 to 217,000
- April payroll were revised up by 41,000, from 253,000 to 294,000
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
We’ve got two months of payroll data since the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March, and nothing suggests weakness arising from that banking crisis.
Over the first five months of the year, the economy’s added 1.5 million jobs. That in a nutshell tells you how the economy is doing. For perspective, the average annual payroll growth between 1940 and 2022 was 1.5 million. During the last expansion, 2010-2019, average annual payroll growth was 2.2 million per year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
But what about the unemployment rate?
The unemployment rate did rise from a 50-year low of 3.4% to 3.7%. This does raise some cause for concern but digging through the data suggests it may be noise more than anything else.
It probably helps to understand that the job growth and unemployment rate data come from different sources. The former comes from asking about 120,000+ businesses how many people they hired. The latter comes from asking about 60,000 households about their employment status. No surprise, the latter is noisier.
A big reason for the weak household survey (and rising unemployment rate) is that more than 400,000 people who were self-employed said they were no longer employed. As you can see in the following chart this is very noisy data, but the recent trend seems to be toward lower self-employment. It’s basically reversing the surge we saw in 2021, when self-employment surged. So, what we’re seeing now may simply be normalization of the labor market as more workers move from self-employment to W2 jobs with an employer.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Also, the unemployment rate can be impacted by people leaving the labor force (technically defined as those “not looking for work”) and an aging population. I’ve discussed in prior blogs how we can get around this by looking at the employment-population ratio for prime age workers, i.e. workers aged 25-54 years. This measures the number of people working as a percent of the civilian population. Think of it as the opposite of the unemployment rate, and because we use prime age, you also get around the demographic issue.
The good news is that the prime-age employment-population ratio dropped only a tick, from 80.8% to 80.7%. This still leaves it higher than at any point between 2002 and 2022.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the labor market remains strong and resilient, despite all the recession calls. Perhaps its not as strong as the headline payroll growth number of 339,000 suggests, but any number above 150,000 would be good at this point. And we’re certainly well above that.
In fact, looking at the job growth and employment-population data, this labor market is probably the strongest we’ve seen since the late 1990’s. Our view since the end of last year has been that the economy can avoid a recession this year, and nothing we’ve seen to date suggests we need to reverse that view. Far from it.
June Better in Pre-Election Years
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Since 1971 June has shone brighter on NASDAQ stocks as a rule ranking eighth best with an 0.8% average gain, up 29 of 52 years. This contributes to NASDAQ’s “Best 8 Months” which ends in June. Small caps also fare well in June. Russell 2000 has averaged 0.6% in June since 1979 advancing 63.6% of the time.
June ranks near the bottom on the Dow Jones Industrials just above September since 1950 with an average loss of 0.2%. S&P 500 performs similarly poorly, ranking ninth, but essentially flat (0.02% average gain).
Despite being much stronger S&P 500 pre-election year June ranks fifth best. For the rest it is just sixth best. Average monthly gains in pre-election year June range from DJIA 1.1% to a respectable 2.4% for NASDAQ. Russell 2000 has been the most consistently bullish in pre-election years, up 8 of the last 11 (72.7% of the time).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
The June Swoon?
Stocks did it again, as the S&P 500 gained 0.2% in the month of May, making it now 10 of the past 11 years that stocks finished green in May. Of course, it gained only 0.01% last year and only 0.25% this year, so the recent returns weren’t off the charts by any measure.
Looking specifically at this year, tech added more than 9% in May, thanks to excitement over AI and Nvidia, with communication services and consumer discretionary also in the green, while the other eight sectors were lower.
Specifically, turning to the month of June, stocks historically have hit a bit of trouble here. Since 1950, up 0.03% on average, the fourth worst month of the year. Over the past 20 years, only January and September have been worse and in the past decade, it is again the fourth worst month. The one bit of good news is during a pre-election year is it up 1.5%, the fifth-best month of the year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here’s another chart we’ve shared before, but years that gained big in January (like 2023) tend to see some periods of consolidation in late May/early June, but eventually experience a surge higher into July. Given the flattish overall May, this could be playing out again.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
What if stocks were having a good year heading into June? Since 1950, if the S&P 500 was up more than 8% for the year going into June (like this year), the month of June was up an impressive 1.2% on average versus the average June return of 0.03%, while in a pre-election year the returns jumped to 1.8%. The percent of the time where returns were higher gets better as well, from 54.8% in your average June to nearly 74% if up 8% or more for the year heading into June, to 80% of the time higher if up 8% for the year in a pre-election year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Overall, it has been a very nice run for stocks this year and we remain overweight stocks in the Carson Investment Research House Views. June could potentially cause some volatility, but when all is said and done, we wouldn’t bet against more strength and higher prices in June.
NASDAQ and Russell 2000 Lead June Pre-Election Strength
Over the last 21 years, June has been a rather lackluster month. DJIA, S&P 500 and Russell 1000 have all recorded average losses in the month. Russell 2000 has fared better with a modest average gain. Historically the month has opened respectably, advancing on the first and second trading days.
From there the market then drifted sideways and lower into negative territory just ahead of mid-month. Here the market rallied to create a nice mid-month bulge that quickly evaporated and returned to losses. The brisk, post, mid-month drop is typically followed by a month end rally led by technology and small caps.
Historical performance in pre-election years has been much stronger with all five indexes finishing with average gains. June’s overall pattern in pre-election is similar to the last 21-years pattern with a brief, shallow pullback after a solid start.
In pre-election years the mid-month rally has been much more robust beginning around the sixth trading day and lasting until the fifteenth. Followed by another modest retreat and rally into the end of Q2.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
May and YTD 2023 Asset Class Performance
May 2023 is now behind us, and below is a look at how various asset classes performed during the month using US-listed exchange-traded products as proxies. We also include YTD and YoY total returns.
May was a month of divergence where Tech/AI soared, and the rest of the market fell. Notably, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) gained 7.88% in May while the Dow Jones Dividend ETF (DVY) fell 7.7%. That's a 15 percentage-point spread!
At the sector level, it was a similar story. While the Tech sector (XLK) rose 8.9%, sectors like Energy (XLE), Consumer Staples (XLP), Materials (XLB), and Utilities (XLU) fell more than 5%. In total, 8 of 11 sectors were in the red for the month.
Outside the US, we saw pullbacks in most areas of the world other than Brazil, India, and Japan. China, Hong Kong, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the UK all fell more than 5%.
All of the commodity-related ETFs/ETNs were in the red for May, with oil (USO) and natural gas (UNG) falling the most at more than 10% each.
Finally, fixed-income ETFs also fell in May as interest rates bounced back. The aggregate bond market ETF (AGG) was down 1.14% in May, leaving it up just 2.6% YTD and down 2.2% year-over-year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
How Worried Should We Be About Consumer Debt?
A very common question we get these days is whether we’re concerned about the massive increase in consumer debt.
Short answer: No. Well, not yet anyway. But let’s walk through it in 6 charts.
The New York Federal Reserve (NY Fed) releases a quarterly report on household debt and credit, and the latest one that was released last week came with the headline:
“Household Debt Hits $17.05 Trillion in First Quarter.” But let’s look at the details. Household debt increased by $148 billion in Q1. That translates to a 0.9% increase, which is the slowest quarterly increase in two years. Most of the increase in debt was from mortgage originations ($121 billion) – mortgage debt makes up $12 trillion of the total $17 trillion in debt. The rest was auto loan and student loan balances.
Here’s something interesting: credit card balances were flat in Q1, at $986 billion. The fact that overall balances are higher than where they were in 2019 ($927 billion) should not be surprising given we just experienced a lot of inflation. Prices rose at the fastest pace in 40 years, and so you should expect card balances to increase. However, incomes rose as well.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
When you think debt, the key question is whether households are able to service that debt. A good measure of that is to look at debt service costs as a percent of disposable income. As of Q4 2022, that’s at 9.7%, slightly lower than what it was before the pandemic and well below the historical average.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
There’s even better news: disposable income grew 2.9% in the first quarter of 2023. Significantly higher than the 0.9% increase in total household debt, let alone interest costs!
Part of that includes the large boost to social security income due to inflation adjustments in January. Also, tax brackets were adjusted higher, resulting in more money in household wallets.
But even if you exclude these one-off increases, disposable income growth has been strong between February and April, rising at a 5% annualized pace. In fact, employee compensation by itself has risen at a 3.9% annualized pace over the past three months. Meanwhile, inflation is running just about 3% – which means households are seeing real income gains (adjusted for inflation).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
This is why consumers don’t feel the need to borrow to the extent they did before the pandemic. Credit utilization rates measure credit card balances as a percent of available credit. As you can see in the following chart, utilization rates for both credit cards and home equity lines of credit are well below pre-pandemic averages.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Lack of stress showing in delinquency data as well
Another way to look for signs of consumer stress is to look at the debt delinquency data. As of the first quarter, the NY Fed survey showed that the percent of loan balances that were more than 90 days delinquent was stable around 1.5%. That’s down from 1.9% a year ago, and quite a bit below the 3% average in 2019.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Even third-party collections are at record lows, with just over 5% of consumers having collections against them as of the first quarter. This is down from 6% a year ago and below the 2019 average of 9.2%. The average collection amount per person is $1,316, which is lower than the $1,452 average in late 2019. This is surprising because just with inflation you’d have thought the amount would be higher.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the data on consumer finances is not showing much cause for concern. So, count us in the “not worried” camp. At least, not yet.
Some Good Inflation News
While the market prices in a much higher likelihood of a rate hike at the June meeting, there was actually some decent news on the inflation front today. Starting with the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence report, in this month's update, the inflation expectations component fell to 6.1% from a peak of 7.9% fifteen months ago in March 2022 (first time reading touched 7.9%). Looking at the chart below, this reading was also at 6.1% fifteen months before that first peak. In other words, for all the talk about how inflation has been stickier, the pace of decline in this indicator on the way down has been the same as the pace of increase on the way up.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Another notable report was today's release of the Dallas Fed Manufacturing report. The Prices Paid component of that report showed a decline from 19.5 down to 13.8 which was the lowest reading since July 2020. For the month of May, two of the five components (Empire and Philadelphia) showed modest m/m increases from multi-month lows, and three showed significant declines to multi-month lows. The chart below shows a composite of the Prices Paid component using the z-scores for each of the five individual components going back to 2010. The peak for this component was 19 months ago in November 2021. Unlike the inflation expectations of the Conference Board survey, this reading hasn't declined quite as fast as it increased in the 19 months leading up to the peak, but at -0.2, it is still below its historical average dating back to 2010 and back down to levels it was at right before the COVID shock hit the economy in early 2020.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Home Prices Bounce in Hardest Hit Areas
March data on home prices across the country were released today with updated S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller numbers. Case Shiller home prices had been falling rapidly in many of the twenty cities tracked, but in March we actually saw a pretty big month-over-month bounce in some of the hardest-hit areas like San Diego, San Francisco, LA, Denver, and Phoenix. Some cities still saw declines, however. Las Vegas saw a m/m drop of 0.93%, while Miami fell 0.41%, and Seattle fell 0.28%.
On a year-over-year basis, Miami is still up the most with a gain of 10.86%. As shown in the table below, Miami home prices are up 59.87% from pre-COVID levels in February 2020, and they're only down 2.9% from post-COVID highs. Only Tampa is up more than Miami from pre-COVID levels (+61.04%), but Tampa prices are down more from their post-COVID highs (-4.70%) than Miami (-2.90%).
Four cities are down more than 10% from their post-COVID highs: San Diego (-10.12%), Las Vegas (-10.95%), San Francisco (-16.35%), and Seattle (-16.50%). New York is down the least from post-COVID highs of any city tracked at just -2.9%.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Below we include charts of home price levels across all 20 cities tracked by Case Shiller along with the three composite indices. We've included a vertical red line on each chart to highlight pre-COVID levels. When looking through the charts, you can see this month's small bounce back in most cities after a 6-9 month pullback in prices from peaks seen early last year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
STOCK MARKET VIDEO: Stock Market Analysis Video for Week Ending June 5th, 2023
(CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!)
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)STOCK MARKET VIDEO: ShadowTrader Video Weekly 6/2/23
([CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!]())
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)($NIO $GTLB $GME $CIEN $DOCU $SAIC $ASO $SJM $CXM $THO $OLLI $MOMO $CBRL $FERG $TTC $HQY $CPB $PLAY $QMCO $FCEL $LOVE $ABM $CNM $HTOO $TCOM $JOAN $UNFI $SFIX $CHS $GIII $SIG $SMAR $PL $ZFOX $HYZN $VRA $CASY $MTN $SMTC $ALYA $DBI $SCWX $JILL $OESX $BSE $REVG $VBNK $VRNT $RENT $HCP)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S MOST NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S HIGHEST VOLATILITY EARNINGS RELEASES!)
([CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!]())
(N/A.)
Monday 6.5.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Monday 6.5.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Friday 6.9.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)
Friday 6.9.23 After Market Close:
([CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!]())
(NONE.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.) (T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
DISCUSS!
What are you all watching for in this upcoming trading week?Join the Official Reddit Stock Market Chat Discord Server HERE!
2023.06.02 23:35 bigbear0083 Wall Street Week Ahead for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023
Good Friday evening to all of you here on stocks! I hope everyone on this sub made out pretty nicely in the market this past week, and are ready for the new trading week ahead. :)
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Here is the list of notable tickers reporting earnings in this upcoming trading week ahead-
Here is the full list of companies report earnings for this upcoming trading week ahead which includes the date/time of release & consensus estimates courtesy of Earnings Whispers:
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a great new trading week ahead stocks. :)
submitted by bigbear0083 to stocks [link] [comments]
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Dow leaps 700 points on hot jobs report, Nasdaq notches sixth straight winning week: Live updates - (Source)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged Friday as traders cheered a strong jobs report and the passage of a debt ceiling bill that averts a U.S. default.
The 30-stock Dow jumped 701.19 points, or 2.12%, to end at 33,762.76 — its best day since January. The S&P 500 climbed 1.45% to close at 4,282.37. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.07% to 13,240.77, reaching its highest level since April 2022 during the session.
With Friday’s gains, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished the holiday-shortened trading week about 1.8% and 2% higher, respectively. The Dow’s Friday advance pushed it into positive territory for the week, finishing up around 2%. The Nasdaq notched its sixth straight week higher, a streak length not seen for the technology-heavy index since 2020.
Nonfarm payrolls grew much more than expected in May, rising 339,000. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a relatively modest 190,000 increase. It marked the 29th straight month of positive job growth.
Recently strong employment data had been pressuring stocks on the notion it would keep the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. But Friday data also showed average hourly earnings rose less than economists expected year over year, while the unemployment rate was higher than anticipated.
Both data points have given investors hope that the Fed could pause its interest rate hike campaign at the policy meeting later this month, according to Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.
“The so-called Goldilocks has entered the house,” Sandven said. “Clearly, on the bullish side, there are signs that inflation is starting to wane, speculation that the Fed is going to move into pause mode, increasing the likelihood of a soft landing.”
Easing concerns around the U.S. debt ceiling also helped sentiment. The Senate passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling late Thursday night, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk. That comes after the House passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Wednesday, just days before the June 5 deadline set by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Lululemon shares popped more than 11% on strong results and a guidance boost, while MongoDB surged 28% on a blowout forecast.
This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL S&P TREE MAP FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
S&P Sectors for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE S&P SECTORS FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Indices for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR INDICES FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Futures Markets as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR FUTURES INDICES AS OF FRIDAY!)
Economic Calendar for the Week Ahead:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ECONOMIC CALENDAR FOR THE WEEK AHEAD!)
Percentage Changes for the Major Indices, WTD, MTD, QTD, YTD as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
S&P Sectors for the Past Week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Pullback/Correction Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Rally Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Friday's Stock Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #1!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #2!)
A Resilient Labor Market = A Resilient Economy
Another month, another employment surprise. Should we be surprised anymore?
Economists expected payrolls to grow by about 187,000 in May. That’s still a solid job growth number, but a stepdown from what we’ve seen this year through April. However, actual payroll growth beat expectations for the 14th straight month.
The economy created 339,000 jobs in May, close to double expectations. Better still, payroll growth in March and April were revised higher by a total of 93,000!
- March payrolls were revised up by 52,000, from 165,000 to 217,000
- April payroll were revised up by 41,000, from 253,000 to 294,000
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
We’ve got two months of payroll data since the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March, and nothing suggests weakness arising from that banking crisis.
Over the first five months of the year, the economy’s added 1.5 million jobs. That in a nutshell tells you how the economy is doing. For perspective, the average annual payroll growth between 1940 and 2022 was 1.5 million. During the last expansion, 2010-2019, average annual payroll growth was 2.2 million per year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
But what about the unemployment rate?
The unemployment rate did rise from a 50-year low of 3.4% to 3.7%. This does raise some cause for concern but digging through the data suggests it may be noise more than anything else.
It probably helps to understand that the job growth and unemployment rate data come from different sources. The former comes from asking about 120,000+ businesses how many people they hired. The latter comes from asking about 60,000 households about their employment status. No surprise, the latter is noisier.
A big reason for the weak household survey (and rising unemployment rate) is that more than 400,000 people who were self-employed said they were no longer employed. As you can see in the following chart this is very noisy data, but the recent trend seems to be toward lower self-employment. It’s basically reversing the surge we saw in 2021, when self-employment surged. So, what we’re seeing now may simply be normalization of the labor market as more workers move from self-employment to W2 jobs with an employer.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Also, the unemployment rate can be impacted by people leaving the labor force (technically defined as those “not looking for work”) and an aging population. I’ve discussed in prior blogs how we can get around this by looking at the employment-population ratio for prime age workers, i.e. workers aged 25-54 years. This measures the number of people working as a percent of the civilian population. Think of it as the opposite of the unemployment rate, and because we use prime age, you also get around the demographic issue.
The good news is that the prime-age employment-population ratio dropped only a tick, from 80.8% to 80.7%. This still leaves it higher than at any point between 2002 and 2022.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the labor market remains strong and resilient, despite all the recession calls. Perhaps its not as strong as the headline payroll growth number of 339,000 suggests, but any number above 150,000 would be good at this point. And we’re certainly well above that.
In fact, looking at the job growth and employment-population data, this labor market is probably the strongest we’ve seen since the late 1990’s. Our view since the end of last year has been that the economy can avoid a recession this year, and nothing we’ve seen to date suggests we need to reverse that view. Far from it.
June Better in Pre-Election Years
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Since 1971 June has shone brighter on NASDAQ stocks as a rule ranking eighth best with an 0.8% average gain, up 29 of 52 years. This contributes to NASDAQ’s “Best 8 Months” which ends in June. Small caps also fare well in June. Russell 2000 has averaged 0.6% in June since 1979 advancing 63.6% of the time.
June ranks near the bottom on the Dow Jones Industrials just above September since 1950 with an average loss of 0.2%. S&P 500 performs similarly poorly, ranking ninth, but essentially flat (0.02% average gain).
Despite being much stronger S&P 500 pre-election year June ranks fifth best. For the rest it is just sixth best. Average monthly gains in pre-election year June range from DJIA 1.1% to a respectable 2.4% for NASDAQ. Russell 2000 has been the most consistently bullish in pre-election years, up 8 of the last 11 (72.7% of the time).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
The June Swoon?
Stocks did it again, as the S&P 500 gained 0.2% in the month of May, making it now 10 of the past 11 years that stocks finished green in May. Of course, it gained only 0.01% last year and only 0.25% this year, so the recent returns weren’t off the charts by any measure.
Looking specifically at this year, tech added more than 9% in May, thanks to excitement over AI and Nvidia, with communication services and consumer discretionary also in the green, while the other eight sectors were lower.
Specifically, turning to the month of June, stocks historically have hit a bit of trouble here. Since 1950, up 0.03% on average, the fourth worst month of the year. Over the past 20 years, only January and September have been worse and in the past decade, it is again the fourth worst month. The one bit of good news is during a pre-election year is it up 1.5%, the fifth-best month of the year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here’s another chart we’ve shared before, but years that gained big in January (like 2023) tend to see some periods of consolidation in late May/early June, but eventually experience a surge higher into July. Given the flattish overall May, this could be playing out again.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
What if stocks were having a good year heading into June? Since 1950, if the S&P 500 was up more than 8% for the year going into June (like this year), the month of June was up an impressive 1.2% on average versus the average June return of 0.03%, while in a pre-election year the returns jumped to 1.8%. The percent of the time where returns were higher gets better as well, from 54.8% in your average June to nearly 74% if up 8% or more for the year heading into June, to 80% of the time higher if up 8% for the year in a pre-election year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Overall, it has been a very nice run for stocks this year and we remain overweight stocks in the Carson Investment Research House Views. June could potentially cause some volatility, but when all is said and done, we wouldn’t bet against more strength and higher prices in June.
NASDAQ and Russell 2000 Lead June Pre-Election Strength
Over the last 21 years, June has been a rather lackluster month. DJIA, S&P 500 and Russell 1000 have all recorded average losses in the month. Russell 2000 has fared better with a modest average gain. Historically the month has opened respectably, advancing on the first and second trading days.
From there the market then drifted sideways and lower into negative territory just ahead of mid-month. Here the market rallied to create a nice mid-month bulge that quickly evaporated and returned to losses. The brisk, post, mid-month drop is typically followed by a month end rally led by technology and small caps.
Historical performance in pre-election years has been much stronger with all five indexes finishing with average gains. June’s overall pattern in pre-election is similar to the last 21-years pattern with a brief, shallow pullback after a solid start.
In pre-election years the mid-month rally has been much more robust beginning around the sixth trading day and lasting until the fifteenth. Followed by another modest retreat and rally into the end of Q2.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
May and YTD 2023 Asset Class Performance
May 2023 is now behind us, and below is a look at how various asset classes performed during the month using US-listed exchange-traded products as proxies. We also include YTD and YoY total returns.
May was a month of divergence where Tech/AI soared, and the rest of the market fell. Notably, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) gained 7.88% in May while the Dow Jones Dividend ETF (DVY) fell 7.7%. That's a 15 percentage-point spread!
At the sector level, it was a similar story. While the Tech sector (XLK) rose 8.9%, sectors like Energy (XLE), Consumer Staples (XLP), Materials (XLB), and Utilities (XLU) fell more than 5%. In total, 8 of 11 sectors were in the red for the month.
Outside the US, we saw pullbacks in most areas of the world other than Brazil, India, and Japan. China, Hong Kong, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the UK all fell more than 5%.
All of the commodity-related ETFs/ETNs were in the red for May, with oil (USO) and natural gas (UNG) falling the most at more than 10% each.
Finally, fixed-income ETFs also fell in May as interest rates bounced back. The aggregate bond market ETF (AGG) was down 1.14% in May, leaving it up just 2.6% YTD and down 2.2% year-over-year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
How Worried Should We Be About Consumer Debt?
A very common question we get these days is whether we’re concerned about the massive increase in consumer debt.
Short answer: No. Well, not yet anyway. But let’s walk through it in 6 charts.
The New York Federal Reserve (NY Fed) releases a quarterly report on household debt and credit, and the latest one that was released last week came with the headline:
“Household Debt Hits $17.05 Trillion in First Quarter.” But let’s look at the details. Household debt increased by $148 billion in Q1. That translates to a 0.9% increase, which is the slowest quarterly increase in two years. Most of the increase in debt was from mortgage originations ($121 billion) – mortgage debt makes up $12 trillion of the total $17 trillion in debt. The rest was auto loan and student loan balances.
Here’s something interesting: credit card balances were flat in Q1, at $986 billion. The fact that overall balances are higher than where they were in 2019 ($927 billion) should not be surprising given we just experienced a lot of inflation. Prices rose at the fastest pace in 40 years, and so you should expect card balances to increase. However, incomes rose as well.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
When you think debt, the key question is whether households are able to service that debt. A good measure of that is to look at debt service costs as a percent of disposable income. As of Q4 2022, that’s at 9.7%, slightly lower than what it was before the pandemic and well below the historical average.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
There’s even better news: disposable income grew 2.9% in the first quarter of 2023. Significantly higher than the 0.9% increase in total household debt, let alone interest costs!
Part of that includes the large boost to social security income due to inflation adjustments in January. Also, tax brackets were adjusted higher, resulting in more money in household wallets.
But even if you exclude these one-off increases, disposable income growth has been strong between February and April, rising at a 5% annualized pace. In fact, employee compensation by itself has risen at a 3.9% annualized pace over the past three months. Meanwhile, inflation is running just about 3% – which means households are seeing real income gains (adjusted for inflation).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
This is why consumers don’t feel the need to borrow to the extent they did before the pandemic. Credit utilization rates measure credit card balances as a percent of available credit. As you can see in the following chart, utilization rates for both credit cards and home equity lines of credit are well below pre-pandemic averages.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Lack of stress showing in delinquency data as well
Another way to look for signs of consumer stress is to look at the debt delinquency data. As of the first quarter, the NY Fed survey showed that the percent of loan balances that were more than 90 days delinquent was stable around 1.5%. That’s down from 1.9% a year ago, and quite a bit below the 3% average in 2019.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Even third-party collections are at record lows, with just over 5% of consumers having collections against them as of the first quarter. This is down from 6% a year ago and below the 2019 average of 9.2%. The average collection amount per person is $1,316, which is lower than the $1,452 average in late 2019. This is surprising because just with inflation you’d have thought the amount would be higher.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the data on consumer finances is not showing much cause for concern. So, count us in the “not worried” camp. At least, not yet.
Some Good Inflation News
While the market prices in a much higher likelihood of a rate hike at the June meeting, there was actually some decent news on the inflation front today. Starting with the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence report, in this month's update, the inflation expectations component fell to 6.1% from a peak of 7.9% fifteen months ago in March 2022 (first time reading touched 7.9%). Looking at the chart below, this reading was also at 6.1% fifteen months before that first peak. In other words, for all the talk about how inflation has been stickier, the pace of decline in this indicator on the way down has been the same as the pace of increase on the way up.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Another notable report was today's release of the Dallas Fed Manufacturing report. The Prices Paid component of that report showed a decline from 19.5 down to 13.8 which was the lowest reading since July 2020. For the month of May, two of the five components (Empire and Philadelphia) showed modest m/m increases from multi-month lows, and three showed significant declines to multi-month lows. The chart below shows a composite of the Prices Paid component using the z-scores for each of the five individual components going back to 2010. The peak for this component was 19 months ago in November 2021. Unlike the inflation expectations of the Conference Board survey, this reading hasn't declined quite as fast as it increased in the 19 months leading up to the peak, but at -0.2, it is still below its historical average dating back to 2010 and back down to levels it was at right before the COVID shock hit the economy in early 2020.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Home Prices Bounce in Hardest Hit Areas
March data on home prices across the country were released today with updated S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller numbers. Case Shiller home prices had been falling rapidly in many of the twenty cities tracked, but in March we actually saw a pretty big month-over-month bounce in some of the hardest-hit areas like San Diego, San Francisco, LA, Denver, and Phoenix. Some cities still saw declines, however. Las Vegas saw a m/m drop of 0.93%, while Miami fell 0.41%, and Seattle fell 0.28%.
On a year-over-year basis, Miami is still up the most with a gain of 10.86%. As shown in the table below, Miami home prices are up 59.87% from pre-COVID levels in February 2020, and they're only down 2.9% from post-COVID highs. Only Tampa is up more than Miami from pre-COVID levels (+61.04%), but Tampa prices are down more from their post-COVID highs (-4.70%) than Miami (-2.90%).
Four cities are down more than 10% from their post-COVID highs: San Diego (-10.12%), Las Vegas (-10.95%), San Francisco (-16.35%), and Seattle (-16.50%). New York is down the least from post-COVID highs of any city tracked at just -2.9%.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Below we include charts of home price levels across all 20 cities tracked by Case Shiller along with the three composite indices. We've included a vertical red line on each chart to highlight pre-COVID levels. When looking through the charts, you can see this month's small bounce back in most cities after a 6-9 month pullback in prices from peaks seen early last year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(*T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S MOST NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S HIGHEST VOLATILITY EARNINGS RELEASES!)
([CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!]())
(N/A.)
Monday 6.5.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Monday 6.5.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Friday 6.9.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)
Friday 6.9.23 After Market Close:
([CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!]())
(NONE.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.) (T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
DISCUSS!
What are you all watching for in this upcoming trading week?2023.06.02 23:33 bigbear0083 Wall Street Week Ahead for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023
Good Friday evening to all of you here on StockMarketChat! I hope everyone on this sub made out pretty nicely in the market this past week, and are ready for the new trading week ahead. :)
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Here is the list of notable tickers reporting earnings in this upcoming trading week ahead-
Here is the full list of companies report earnings for this upcoming trading week ahead which includes the date/time of release & consensus estimates courtesy of Earnings Whispers:
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a great new trading week ahead StockMarketChat. :)
submitted by bigbear0083 to StockMarketChat [link] [comments]
Here is everything you need to know to get you ready for the trading week beginning June 5th, 2023.
Dow leaps 700 points on hot jobs report, Nasdaq notches sixth straight winning week: Live updates - (Source)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged Friday as traders cheered a strong jobs report and the passage of a debt ceiling bill that averts a U.S. default.
The 30-stock Dow jumped 701.19 points, or 2.12%, to end at 33,762.76 — its best day since January. The S&P 500 climbed 1.45% to close at 4,282.37. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.07% to 13,240.77, reaching its highest level since April 2022 during the session.
With Friday’s gains, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished the holiday-shortened trading week about 1.8% and 2% higher, respectively. The Dow’s Friday advance pushed it into positive territory for the week, finishing up around 2%. The Nasdaq notched its sixth straight week higher, a streak length not seen for the technology-heavy index since 2020.
Nonfarm payrolls grew much more than expected in May, rising 339,000. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a relatively modest 190,000 increase. It marked the 29th straight month of positive job growth.
Recently strong employment data had been pressuring stocks on the notion it would keep the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. But Friday data also showed average hourly earnings rose less than economists expected year over year, while the unemployment rate was higher than anticipated.
Both data points have given investors hope that the Fed could pause its interest rate hike campaign at the policy meeting later this month, according to Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.
“The so-called Goldilocks has entered the house,” Sandven said. “Clearly, on the bullish side, there are signs that inflation is starting to wane, speculation that the Fed is going to move into pause mode, increasing the likelihood of a soft landing.”
Easing concerns around the U.S. debt ceiling also helped sentiment. The Senate passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling late Thursday night, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk. That comes after the House passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Wednesday, just days before the June 5 deadline set by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Lululemon shares popped more than 11% on strong results and a guidance boost, while MongoDB surged 28% on a blowout forecast.
This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL S&P TREE MAP FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
S&P Sectors for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE S&P SECTORS FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Indices for this past week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR INDICES FOR THE PAST WEEK!)
Major Futures Markets as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE MAJOR FUTURES INDICES AS OF FRIDAY!)
Economic Calendar for the Week Ahead:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ECONOMIC CALENDAR FOR THE WEEK AHEAD!)
Percentage Changes for the Major Indices, WTD, MTD, QTD, YTD as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
S&P Sectors for the Past Week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Pullback/Correction Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Major Indices Rally Levels as of Friday's close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Friday's Stock Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades:
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #1!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART LINK #2!)
A Resilient Labor Market = A Resilient Economy
Another month, another employment surprise. Should we be surprised anymore?
Economists expected payrolls to grow by about 187,000 in May. That’s still a solid job growth number, but a stepdown from what we’ve seen this year through April. However, actual payroll growth beat expectations for the 14th straight month.
The economy created 339,000 jobs in May, close to double expectations. Better still, payroll growth in March and April were revised higher by a total of 93,000!
- March payrolls were revised up by 52,000, from 165,000 to 217,000
- April payroll were revised up by 41,000, from 253,000 to 294,000
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
We’ve got two months of payroll data since the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March, and nothing suggests weakness arising from that banking crisis.
Over the first five months of the year, the economy’s added 1.5 million jobs. That in a nutshell tells you how the economy is doing. For perspective, the average annual payroll growth between 1940 and 2022 was 1.5 million. During the last expansion, 2010-2019, average annual payroll growth was 2.2 million per year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
But what about the unemployment rate?
The unemployment rate did rise from a 50-year low of 3.4% to 3.7%. This does raise some cause for concern but digging through the data suggests it may be noise more than anything else.
It probably helps to understand that the job growth and unemployment rate data come from different sources. The former comes from asking about 120,000+ businesses how many people they hired. The latter comes from asking about 60,000 households about their employment status. No surprise, the latter is noisier.
A big reason for the weak household survey (and rising unemployment rate) is that more than 400,000 people who were self-employed said they were no longer employed. As you can see in the following chart this is very noisy data, but the recent trend seems to be toward lower self-employment. It’s basically reversing the surge we saw in 2021, when self-employment surged. So, what we’re seeing now may simply be normalization of the labor market as more workers move from self-employment to W2 jobs with an employer.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Also, the unemployment rate can be impacted by people leaving the labor force (technically defined as those “not looking for work”) and an aging population. I’ve discussed in prior blogs how we can get around this by looking at the employment-population ratio for prime age workers, i.e. workers aged 25-54 years. This measures the number of people working as a percent of the civilian population. Think of it as the opposite of the unemployment rate, and because we use prime age, you also get around the demographic issue.
The good news is that the prime-age employment-population ratio dropped only a tick, from 80.8% to 80.7%. This still leaves it higher than at any point between 2002 and 2022.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the labor market remains strong and resilient, despite all the recession calls. Perhaps its not as strong as the headline payroll growth number of 339,000 suggests, but any number above 150,000 would be good at this point. And we’re certainly well above that.
In fact, looking at the job growth and employment-population data, this labor market is probably the strongest we’ve seen since the late 1990’s. Our view since the end of last year has been that the economy can avoid a recession this year, and nothing we’ve seen to date suggests we need to reverse that view. Far from it.
June Better in Pre-Election Years
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Since 1971 June has shone brighter on NASDAQ stocks as a rule ranking eighth best with an 0.8% average gain, up 29 of 52 years. This contributes to NASDAQ’s “Best 8 Months” which ends in June. Small caps also fare well in June. Russell 2000 has averaged 0.6% in June since 1979 advancing 63.6% of the time.
June ranks near the bottom on the Dow Jones Industrials just above September since 1950 with an average loss of 0.2%. S&P 500 performs similarly poorly, ranking ninth, but essentially flat (0.02% average gain).
Despite being much stronger S&P 500 pre-election year June ranks fifth best. For the rest it is just sixth best. Average monthly gains in pre-election year June range from DJIA 1.1% to a respectable 2.4% for NASDAQ. Russell 2000 has been the most consistently bullish in pre-election years, up 8 of the last 11 (72.7% of the time).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
The June Swoon?
Stocks did it again, as the S&P 500 gained 0.2% in the month of May, making it now 10 of the past 11 years that stocks finished green in May. Of course, it gained only 0.01% last year and only 0.25% this year, so the recent returns weren’t off the charts by any measure.
Looking specifically at this year, tech added more than 9% in May, thanks to excitement over AI and Nvidia, with communication services and consumer discretionary also in the green, while the other eight sectors were lower.
Specifically, turning to the month of June, stocks historically have hit a bit of trouble here. Since 1950, up 0.03% on average, the fourth worst month of the year. Over the past 20 years, only January and September have been worse and in the past decade, it is again the fourth worst month. The one bit of good news is during a pre-election year is it up 1.5%, the fifth-best month of the year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Here’s another chart we’ve shared before, but years that gained big in January (like 2023) tend to see some periods of consolidation in late May/early June, but eventually experience a surge higher into July. Given the flattish overall May, this could be playing out again.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
What if stocks were having a good year heading into June? Since 1950, if the S&P 500 was up more than 8% for the year going into June (like this year), the month of June was up an impressive 1.2% on average versus the average June return of 0.03%, while in a pre-election year the returns jumped to 1.8%. The percent of the time where returns were higher gets better as well, from 54.8% in your average June to nearly 74% if up 8% or more for the year heading into June, to 80% of the time higher if up 8% for the year in a pre-election year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Overall, it has been a very nice run for stocks this year and we remain overweight stocks in the Carson Investment Research House Views. June could potentially cause some volatility, but when all is said and done, we wouldn’t bet against more strength and higher prices in June.
NASDAQ and Russell 2000 Lead June Pre-Election Strength
Over the last 21 years, June has been a rather lackluster month. DJIA, S&P 500 and Russell 1000 have all recorded average losses in the month. Russell 2000 has fared better with a modest average gain. Historically the month has opened respectably, advancing on the first and second trading days.
From there the market then drifted sideways and lower into negative territory just ahead of mid-month. Here the market rallied to create a nice mid-month bulge that quickly evaporated and returned to losses. The brisk, post, mid-month drop is typically followed by a month end rally led by technology and small caps.
Historical performance in pre-election years has been much stronger with all five indexes finishing with average gains. June’s overall pattern in pre-election is similar to the last 21-years pattern with a brief, shallow pullback after a solid start.
In pre-election years the mid-month rally has been much more robust beginning around the sixth trading day and lasting until the fifteenth. Followed by another modest retreat and rally into the end of Q2.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
May and YTD 2023 Asset Class Performance
May 2023 is now behind us, and below is a look at how various asset classes performed during the month using US-listed exchange-traded products as proxies. We also include YTD and YoY total returns.
May was a month of divergence where Tech/AI soared, and the rest of the market fell. Notably, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) gained 7.88% in May while the Dow Jones Dividend ETF (DVY) fell 7.7%. That's a 15 percentage-point spread!
At the sector level, it was a similar story. While the Tech sector (XLK) rose 8.9%, sectors like Energy (XLE), Consumer Staples (XLP), Materials (XLB), and Utilities (XLU) fell more than 5%. In total, 8 of 11 sectors were in the red for the month.
Outside the US, we saw pullbacks in most areas of the world other than Brazil, India, and Japan. China, Hong Kong, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the UK all fell more than 5%.
All of the commodity-related ETFs/ETNs were in the red for May, with oil (USO) and natural gas (UNG) falling the most at more than 10% each.
Finally, fixed-income ETFs also fell in May as interest rates bounced back. The aggregate bond market ETF (AGG) was down 1.14% in May, leaving it up just 2.6% YTD and down 2.2% year-over-year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
How Worried Should We Be About Consumer Debt?
A very common question we get these days is whether we’re concerned about the massive increase in consumer debt.
Short answer: No. Well, not yet anyway. But let’s walk through it in 6 charts.
The New York Federal Reserve (NY Fed) releases a quarterly report on household debt and credit, and the latest one that was released last week came with the headline:
“Household Debt Hits $17.05 Trillion in First Quarter.” But let’s look at the details. Household debt increased by $148 billion in Q1. That translates to a 0.9% increase, which is the slowest quarterly increase in two years. Most of the increase in debt was from mortgage originations ($121 billion) – mortgage debt makes up $12 trillion of the total $17 trillion in debt. The rest was auto loan and student loan balances.
Here’s something interesting: credit card balances were flat in Q1, at $986 billion. The fact that overall balances are higher than where they were in 2019 ($927 billion) should not be surprising given we just experienced a lot of inflation. Prices rose at the fastest pace in 40 years, and so you should expect card balances to increase. However, incomes rose as well.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
When you think debt, the key question is whether households are able to service that debt. A good measure of that is to look at debt service costs as a percent of disposable income. As of Q4 2022, that’s at 9.7%, slightly lower than what it was before the pandemic and well below the historical average.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
There’s even better news: disposable income grew 2.9% in the first quarter of 2023. Significantly higher than the 0.9% increase in total household debt, let alone interest costs!
Part of that includes the large boost to social security income due to inflation adjustments in January. Also, tax brackets were adjusted higher, resulting in more money in household wallets.
But even if you exclude these one-off increases, disposable income growth has been strong between February and April, rising at a 5% annualized pace. In fact, employee compensation by itself has risen at a 3.9% annualized pace over the past three months. Meanwhile, inflation is running just about 3% – which means households are seeing real income gains (adjusted for inflation).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
This is why consumers don’t feel the need to borrow to the extent they did before the pandemic. Credit utilization rates measure credit card balances as a percent of available credit. As you can see in the following chart, utilization rates for both credit cards and home equity lines of credit are well below pre-pandemic averages.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Lack of stress showing in delinquency data as well
Another way to look for signs of consumer stress is to look at the debt delinquency data. As of the first quarter, the NY Fed survey showed that the percent of loan balances that were more than 90 days delinquent was stable around 1.5%. That’s down from 1.9% a year ago, and quite a bit below the 3% average in 2019.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Even third-party collections are at record lows, with just over 5% of consumers having collections against them as of the first quarter. This is down from 6% a year ago and below the 2019 average of 9.2%. The average collection amount per person is $1,316, which is lower than the $1,452 average in late 2019. This is surprising because just with inflation you’d have thought the amount would be higher.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
All in all, the data on consumer finances is not showing much cause for concern. So, count us in the “not worried” camp. At least, not yet.
Some Good Inflation News
While the market prices in a much higher likelihood of a rate hike at the June meeting, there was actually some decent news on the inflation front today. Starting with the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence report, in this month's update, the inflation expectations component fell to 6.1% from a peak of 7.9% fifteen months ago in March 2022 (first time reading touched 7.9%). Looking at the chart below, this reading was also at 6.1% fifteen months before that first peak. In other words, for all the talk about how inflation has been stickier, the pace of decline in this indicator on the way down has been the same as the pace of increase on the way up.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Another notable report was today's release of the Dallas Fed Manufacturing report. The Prices Paid component of that report showed a decline from 19.5 down to 13.8 which was the lowest reading since July 2020. For the month of May, two of the five components (Empire and Philadelphia) showed modest m/m increases from multi-month lows, and three showed significant declines to multi-month lows. The chart below shows a composite of the Prices Paid component using the z-scores for each of the five individual components going back to 2010. The peak for this component was 19 months ago in November 2021. Unlike the inflation expectations of the Conference Board survey, this reading hasn't declined quite as fast as it increased in the 19 months leading up to the peak, but at -0.2, it is still below its historical average dating back to 2010 and back down to levels it was at right before the COVID shock hit the economy in early 2020.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Home Prices Bounce in Hardest Hit Areas
March data on home prices across the country were released today with updated S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller numbers. Case Shiller home prices had been falling rapidly in many of the twenty cities tracked, but in March we actually saw a pretty big month-over-month bounce in some of the hardest-hit areas like San Diego, San Francisco, LA, Denver, and Phoenix. Some cities still saw declines, however. Las Vegas saw a m/m drop of 0.93%, while Miami fell 0.41%, and Seattle fell 0.28%.
On a year-over-year basis, Miami is still up the most with a gain of 10.86%. As shown in the table below, Miami home prices are up 59.87% from pre-COVID levels in February 2020, and they're only down 2.9% from post-COVID highs. Only Tampa is up more than Miami from pre-COVID levels (+61.04%), but Tampa prices are down more from their post-COVID highs (-4.70%) than Miami (-2.90%).
Four cities are down more than 10% from their post-COVID highs: San Diego (-10.12%), Las Vegas (-10.95%), San Francisco (-16.35%), and Seattle (-16.50%). New York is down the least from post-COVID highs of any city tracked at just -2.9%.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
Below we include charts of home price levels across all 20 cities tracked by Case Shiller along with the three composite indices. We've included a vertical red line on each chart to highlight pre-COVID levels. When looking through the charts, you can see this month's small bounce back in most cities after a 6-9 month pullback in prices from peaks seen early last year.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
STOCK MARKET VIDEO: Stock Market Analysis Video for Week Ending June 5th, 2023
(CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!)
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)STOCK MARKET VIDEO: ShadowTrader Video Weekly 6/2/23
([CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!]())
(VIDEO NOT YET POSTED.)($NIO $GTLB $GME $CIEN $DOCU $SAIC $ASO $SJM $CXM $THO $OLLI $MOMO $CBRL $FERG $TTC $HQY $CPB $PLAY $QMCO $FCEL $LOVE $ABM $CNM $HTOO $TCOM $JOAN $UNFI $SFIX $CHS $GIII $SIG $SMAR $PL $ZFOX $HYZN $VRA $CASY $MTN $SMTC $ALYA $DBI $SCWX $JILL $OESX $BSE $REVG $VBNK $VRNT $RENT $HCP)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S MOST NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!)
(CLICK HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S HIGHEST VOLATILITY EARNINGS RELEASES!)
([CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET NOTABLE EARNINGS RELEASES!]())
(N/A.)
Monday 6.5.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Monday 6.5.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR MONDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Tuesday 6.6.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR TUESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Wednesday 6.7.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR WEDNESDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Thursday 6.8.23 After Market Close:
(CLICK HERE FOR THURSDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!)
Friday 6.9.23 Before Market Open:
(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES LINK!)
Friday 6.9.23 After Market Close:
([CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S AFTER-MARKET EARNINGS TIME & ESTIMATES!]())
(NONE.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.)
(T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.) (T.B.A. THIS WEEKEND.).
(CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART!)
DISCUSS!
What are you all watching for in this upcoming trading week?Join the Official Reddit Stock Market Chat Discord Server HERE!
2023.06.02 22:57 pyscho_gregory '14 Crosstrek Oil Leak. Timing Cover?
My 14 crosstrek which I just bought in feburary has an oil leak. When I went to have my oil changed they said it appears to be coming from the timing cover, but wouldnt know unless they put dye in it. Is this common? Whats the price tag looking like.
submitted by pyscho_gregory to Crosstrek [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 22:56 pyscho_gregory '14 Oil Leak. Timing Cover?
My 14 crosstrek which I just bought in feburary has an oil leak. When I went to have my oil changed they said it appears to be coming from the timing cover, but wouldnt know unless they put dye in it. Is this common? Whats the price tag looking like.
submitted by pyscho_gregory to XVcrosstrek [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 22:54 Pavel_Sergievsky Ukraine vs. Russia: Russian perspective.
Dear Professor Peterson,
I realize that your schedule probably won’t allow you to read this letter, least to reply. I am not expecting either of these and will not be offended. Why do I write it, then? Well, most probably because in the past several years you have been for me the voice of reason from abroad. Too many things are going in a crazy and disastrous direction, and listening to your lectures and videos have been very inspiring. It always amazes me how deeply you investigate the problem and how thoroughly you analyze it. In many cases listening to what you say have been like hearing what I always felt was true, but could not formulate and justify it myself. Thank you for that experience.
During the past year, which not only attracted the whole world’s attention to a conflict in Ukraine (at last, I’d say, war started there in 2014), but also demonstrated the unwillingness of countries and people to hear each other, I felt the growing urge to share Russian understanding of current situation and of the events that lead to it with someone who could probably be able to hear. Your name was the first to come to my mind. I hesitated until some time ago I came across the interview that you have recorded – “Israel, Russia, China, Iran: The World in Conflict” and it actually triggered me into writing. It occurred to me that, objective as you are, you may be unaware of some facts and interpretations, partly because modern media have mastered the art of being silent about some facts while shouting about the others, partly because you were born and raised in Anglo-Saxon civilization, with all embedded ideas and principles.
A bit about my background. Master’s degree in English language and literature, spent one year as a student in Connecticut, worked in American-owned companies for 17 years. That allows me to a certain degree to understand both sets of values.
I wanted to offer for your attention the view from the other side on what’s happening now between Russia and Western European civilization. I don't say that it is correct, I just say how Russians see it.
Very briefly, just point by point:
Looking at the international events of past 30-40 years, we may see 3 basic principles of international policy that the West is utilizing.
b) After the ancient Rome fell, and Europe lived through the Dark Ages, Arabian countries preserved much of knowledge and science. At that time Arabian East was much more cultural and civilized than Europe. What happened to them later, why they stopped developing science, how could Europe overtake them? One of the explanations is that at some point of time Muslim theologians declared that “Koran has everything”, so scientific research stopped. The legend says that under this slogan the Library of Alexandria has been burnt by Arabian conquerors.
c) There is an interesting correlation between the agricultural conditions in a certain territory and some national traits of character. That’s more than a coincidence. For example, wheat was the main crop in Europe. It doesn’t require any special irrigation, so you can well grow and harvest it alone. That means you are less dependent on other people. Hence smaller states (Germany before mid-XIX century consisted of dozens independent states), hence more independent opinions. Compare it to China. Rice requires serious irrigation works, you’ll never do it alone. In order to harvest rice, you need to organize a fairly large group of people to do a job together. And as the population grows, you need to perform those works at a larger scale, also because the easiest-to-work fields are already busy. As a result, we see that Chinese value the society more than they value an individual. A single person sacrificing his wishes for the good of the others is more acceptable for them than for Europeans.
This idea needs further thinking but it is quite possible that the liberalism and human rights developed in Western Europe to the extent we see due to a unique combination of religion, natural conditions and other factors. And it can’t be copied in other parts of the world. It can be brought to other parts of the world by immigration of people with European mentality, of course. But otherwise it can be done only by complete mentality change of local inhabitants. Not an easy task, could take generations and mean death of local culture.
In some part such understanding is based on the theory that appeared in history (history as a science!) in the UK in 18th century. This theory states that the process of human society development over time is a) linear and b) goes through the same stages in every society of the planet. One of the consequences of this theory was the statement that every society started from matriarchate – researchers came across some primitive society, ruled by women, and made their conclusion. This theory has long been proved wrong, but its influence is still alive.
Even if we accept that all countries, all societies are aiming at maximizing human rights, how justified will interference be? Good intentions are the pathway to hell. How long it took Anglo-Saxon civilization to reach modern state of human rights? Setting the Magna Carts as the starting point, it is a bit over 800 years, roughly 30 generations. Looking at the world history, we see how slowly societies change their organizational forms, evolving one into another. And you can’t forcefully speed it up. Imagine that our modern “crusaders of democracy” take time machine and show up at Hastings early in the morning on October 14th, 1066. “William, Harold, there is no need to fight. You need to run democratic elections, and everything will be ok…” Will they even understand the idea??? And what will happen the next day after they are left alone?
You have shown significant interest in Russian culture. If you care spending some more time on Russian books, I’d recommend you brothers Strugatsky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkady_and_Boris_Strugatsky). The form of what they have written is science fiction, but the contents is all about ethics, morale, responsibility, conscience. Try «Escape Attempt», «Hard to be a God», «Overburdened with Evil».
Why I am mentioning them now is because among others they are exploring the topic of “progressors” – people from Earth of XXII century who try to speed up the history of other planets, to solve their problems, stop wars, etc. And it doesn’t end well. As one of their heroes says, “You can’t break up the natural course of history without breaking the spine of humanity.”
It’s hard to find examples of good revolutions when they are initiated from abroad. Change of regime should be supported by majority within the country – it is the guarantee that society is ready for it. What Anglo-Saxons and NATO frequently do is supporting the angry minority in its aspirations for power. And instead of peace, freedom and prosperity it brings chaos. The classic example is Libya. Over 10 years ago the country was “spared of Gaddafi’s tyrannical rule”… How do they live now? The GDP is still around 50% of what it used to be, the country is still not at peace, there are two major forces each claiming to be the legal power. How many lives it did cost already and how much time it will take free Libya to recover? Can such liberation be called anything but a disservice? In Russia we call it “bear’s help”. I don’t say that everything was good in the country when Gaddafi was alive, but aren’t they in the worse situation now?
The whole series of Arabian spring looks like a great mess, not a great success. I rely on the opinion of an expert – below is the brief translation of an article published in 2015-2016 by Mordechai Kedar, an Israeli scholar of Arab culture and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. I can’t find the original, unfortunately.
December 2015 was the fifth anniversary of the events known as an ‘Arabian spring’. The world applauded the heroes of the streets in Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain. Now, five years ago, those countries are still battlefields, with no light ahead. What problems have prevented them from positive development? Most of them have developed over centuries and they still prevail in mentality, remaining the dangerous rudiment.
Here’s an article by the same author on the same topic – https://fathomjournal.org/why-we-keep-getting-the-middle-east-wrong/
Here’s an interview with him – https://chicagopolicyreview.org/2015/07/28/americans-still-dont-understand-the-middle-east-this-man-wants-to-help/
In one of your interviews you discussed the competition between China and the US for influence in Africa. And your opinion was that China wins due to corruption of local elites. Let me offer another reason for your consideration. It is the same reason that allows Russia to gain influence in Middle East, Africa, South America. When China or Russia come to some country to cooperate, they come to cooperate, not to teach, not to judge, not to interfere into the internal affairs of the state. And people appreciate this.
De furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine.
One of the principles of democracy is separation of three powers – legislative, judicial and executive. So why then countries that consider themselves “leaders of democratic world” forget about this principle in international relations. They make the rules, they judge and they punish.
One of American diplomats said recently that USA supports international rules-based order. Sounds good, sounds undoubtedly right. But why USA and NATO forget about the rules when it is convenient? Or is it “We support international rules-based order, but our own actions should not be limited by these rules”? What immediately comes to my mind without web search:
Speaking more about the rules… We are tired of seeing double standards. As an illustration, I will use just one aspect – the principle of integrity of the state vs the principle of the right of nations to self-determination. It looks like the West supports integrity of the state, when this state is allied or friendly to the West, and supports nation’s self-determination when the state is not. Let’s go through some examples.
- Chechnya (an autonomous republic within Soviet Union) wanted to become independent after 1991. It quickly started to use terrorism to achieve this goal. It took a lot of effort to stop the war and bring the region back to safety. Reaction of the West – support of chechens, their leader fled to London and was not deported to Russia despite all requests.
- Abkhazia (an autonomous republic within Georgian republic which was part of Soviet Union) wanted to become independent from Georgia when Georgia became independent from Russia. Resulted in a war. The conflict is still not solved. Abkhazia now is an independent state which is acknowledged by very few countries in the world. Reaction of the West – they still consider Abkhazia as a rebellious part of Georgia. Same situation about South Osetia – another region, that was an administrative part of Georgia until 1991 and that also seeks independence.
- Donetsk and Lugansk wanted to become independent from Ukraine after 2014 coup. Ukraine tried to subdue them by force and failed. Then the workplan has been signed in Minsk – what the parties of the conflict agree to do to settle. The result should have been – Donetsk and Lugansk return to Ukraine but have extended political rights, etc. Ukraine did nothing of its promises. Reaction of the West – support of Ukraine.
- Catalonia is seeking independence. And I remember that leaders of independence movement have been under political and criminal pressure.
- Scotland had a referendum about independence. And even though results were in favour of the UK, I remember how nervously London reacted.
Russia – NATO relations after 1991
This is best said by Vladimir Pozner, a journalist who spent years of his work in the USA, Russia, Europe and is one of the most known journalists of the old school (comparing to modern propagandists). Here’s the link to his speech in Yale University on September 27, 2018 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ&t=2556s.
His speech takes around forty minutes, the rest is the Q&A. To save you time, I’d summarize it here in just a couple of phrases. After Soviet Union collapsed, there was an illusion that we aren’t enemies anymore, that the world is open now, and that we will be partners or even friends. Russia dismissed the Warsaw Treaty union and agreed for Germany to unite, that looked just right – why keep a military union when we aren’t enemies anymore? Sometime later Russia made an offer to join NATO to provide world security together and was denied. Russia offered to join the EU, and was denied. Russia was promised that NATO would not expand eastward and less than 10 years later this promise was broken. Since then, we’ve been witnessing NATO getting closer and closer to our borders, inviting countries that are our neighbours and aggressively supporting those candidates to country leadership in East Europe who declared anti-Russia views. So now the illusion is over. We are enemies. And what’s worse – we don’t trust US anymore, so negotiating some new principles of coexistence will be problematic.
Ukraine.
Briefly about history, in more details about recent times and present situation.
In 16-17th century the territory of modern Ukraine was controlled by two forces with no clear border between them. Northwest (where the city of Lvov is now) was under Polish rule, center and the region along river Dnepr – under control of “kazak military democracies” – gatherings of all people, who fled from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Crimea and who with time formed Ukrainians as a nation. They were ruled by elected chieftains and made their living largely by either joining some military campaign for money and loot, or by robbery raids to Poland, Crimea, Turkey. They were allied to Russia due to same religion – Orthodox Christianity.
As Poland grew stronger, its pressure on the territory grew, which led to periodic rebellions. Poland is a Catholic state, and people of Orthodox Ukraine were severely oppressed. Seeking protection, Ukrainian chieftains asked Russia to include those territories into Russian state. First request came in 1591. Russia rejected this request and several others. Only in 1654 part of Ukraine, controlled by kazaks, was included into Russia. Consequences – war with Poland and tens of thousands orthodox people fleeing from Polish-controlled lands into Russian-controlled lands.
From then on Russians and Ukrainians were really ‘brother nations’. Well, it was not heaven, but it was the best available option. Same religion, very close language and mentality. And forget about oppression. Ukrainians were oppressed as much as Russians themselves.
When the WW I started, Germany and Austria-Hungary were looking for collaborators in occupied territories of Russian Empire. They promised independence to nationalists in Western Ukraine, and found people who bought the idea. Not surprisingly, the most dedicated nationalists came from the least developed region of the country. Ukraine did not become independent at that moment, but the ideas stayed and gave their fruit during WW II, when Ukrainian collaborators actively participated in Nazis’ crimes. In one of your videos you described what Unit 731 of Japanese army was doing and you warned your listeners that they will never forget it. If you will find and read witnesses’ accounts of Volhynia massacre, you will never forget it either. I read it once long ago and I never want to read it again. It was a shock to me that people are capable of such things.
In the period between 1945 and 1991 Ukraine had the same rights as any other republic. There were no impediments to preserving and developing local culture. If you lived in any republic, you learned two languages – Russian and local. National literature was actively translated into other national languages of the Soviet Union, there were no impediments to education. Soviet Union with all its flaws, really tried to unite all of its nations into one big family. (What surprises me though is why antisemitism remained. You could come from Georgia, Uzbekistan or Yakutia and pass exams to Moscow university, no problem if you are smart enough. But it could be problematic for a Jew…)
After 1991 Russia and Ukraine remained friendly states, tightly bound by economic, cultural and even family ties. Ukraine tried to get the most out of relations both with Russia and with the West and it worked fairly well for 30 years. But with time attempts to elevate significance of their own nation led Ukrainians down a dangerous path. They started to slowly eliminate all other cultures that were present in the country. This process sped up dramatically in 2014, when after a coup the nationalist forces gained influence on the government.
Official Kiev denies being nationalistic, but don’t trust what the person is saying, see what he is doing.
We see those nationalistic ideas demonstrating themselves in a number of ways, and we have seen them before and we know what threat they can bring if left unattended. Pay attention to a dragon when it is small, you may be unable to win when it grows up.
I don’t say that our perception is correct, I just say how we see it. And to us modern Ukraine is like a younger brother who joined a bad company and who is becoming dangerous.
Now combine these two. Ukrainian nationalism plus NATO. Two threats, one well known historically, another the most dangerous rival of the past 70 years. We see them uniting and it is really an existential threat to us. In such circumstances could we afford being blind to it, just sitting and waiting what comes next? We tried to settle it peacefully. Many times Russia said that we are worried by NATO expansion, that we are worried by Western support of nationalistic movements in our neigbour countries. No effect. The last attempt was made in autumn of 2021, when Putin offered a negotiation that should have resulted in guaranteed safety. No reply.
If there is a conflict and your rival refuses to talk, he is asking for a fight. I don’t say that war in Ukraine is the right way to solve the conflict, but who can say that we did not try to set it by negotiations?
submitted by Pavel_Sergievsky to JordanPeterson [link] [comments]
I realize that your schedule probably won’t allow you to read this letter, least to reply. I am not expecting either of these and will not be offended. Why do I write it, then? Well, most probably because in the past several years you have been for me the voice of reason from abroad. Too many things are going in a crazy and disastrous direction, and listening to your lectures and videos have been very inspiring. It always amazes me how deeply you investigate the problem and how thoroughly you analyze it. In many cases listening to what you say have been like hearing what I always felt was true, but could not formulate and justify it myself. Thank you for that experience.
During the past year, which not only attracted the whole world’s attention to a conflict in Ukraine (at last, I’d say, war started there in 2014), but also demonstrated the unwillingness of countries and people to hear each other, I felt the growing urge to share Russian understanding of current situation and of the events that lead to it with someone who could probably be able to hear. Your name was the first to come to my mind. I hesitated until some time ago I came across the interview that you have recorded – “Israel, Russia, China, Iran: The World in Conflict” and it actually triggered me into writing. It occurred to me that, objective as you are, you may be unaware of some facts and interpretations, partly because modern media have mastered the art of being silent about some facts while shouting about the others, partly because you were born and raised in Anglo-Saxon civilization, with all embedded ideas and principles.
A bit about my background. Master’s degree in English language and literature, spent one year as a student in Connecticut, worked in American-owned companies for 17 years. That allows me to a certain degree to understand both sets of values.
I wanted to offer for your attention the view from the other side on what’s happening now between Russia and Western European civilization. I don't say that it is correct, I just say how Russians see it.
Very briefly, just point by point:
- Currently many people in the West are speaking about Russia as about a threat. But what makes you think that we see you differently? We see you as a growing threat. We don’t trust you. And we have plenty of reason for feeling this way.
- We see the West is regularly breaking its own rules and demonstrating double standards, so we can’t rely on its words.
- It has been clearly shown to us, that we will never be accepted by the West as an equal partner, so to us the West is neither a friend, nor a partner, but a competitor at best, an enemy at worst.
- We have seen what the West does to regimes that don’t obey and how the West does it, so West is a serious threat. Don’t come any closer.
Looking at the international events of past 30-40 years, we may see 3 basic principles of international policy that the West is utilizing.
- Democracy is the best possible society model.
- Pure democracy is limited to small communities, and is impossible in big countries. Once a certain threshold is passed, democracy is either a burden to every decision made, or is executed via representatives. And representatives, being people with all their imperfections, gradually start spoiling and corrupting the idea.
- Democracy tends to evolve, or, I’d rather say, degrade into oligarchy. Examples are numerous. Ancient Greece and Rome, Novgorod Republic (XII-XV cc), medieval Poland, etc. Even now – with all our experience, we keep hitting the same wall. Legal practice of lobbying in USA is the desire of big money (oligarchs) to have more influence on country policy. In Russia lobbying is illegal, so the same goal is achieved by other means, but without digging deep into details, it is the same – democratic form of power, spoiled by natural human desire to grab more for oneself on the expense of others.
- The most prosperous regions now (North America, Western Europe, Scandinavia, New Zealand, Australia) are the ones where capitalism appeared and developed earlier than in other parts of the world. That boosted production, country strength and wealth and eventually allowed them to have colonies in other parts of the world. Owning some overseas land gave enormous economic advantages. Remember “British East India Company”, which at its peak of wealth had an army of 160 thousand soldiers (more than some counties had!). The importance of having colonies can be best illustrated by the simple fact – one of the core reasons of the WW I was the desire of Germany, who was late to the table, to have its share of a pie. And even though political power of metropolises over colonies seized in mid-XXth century, economic bounds stayed much longer. If, let’s say, a uranium mine in Uganda belongs to French company, then which country benefits more from it? And to what extent the modern wealth of Europe and North America is due to other parts of the world?
- I doubt that democracy and human rights priority are possible in every country of the world. This idea just occurred to me, so I did not dig deep into finding the proof, but mentality (to put it narrower – religion) could prevent the society from accepting ideas that are just natural for another society. There are some facts I immediately recall that support this idea.
b) After the ancient Rome fell, and Europe lived through the Dark Ages, Arabian countries preserved much of knowledge and science. At that time Arabian East was much more cultural and civilized than Europe. What happened to them later, why they stopped developing science, how could Europe overtake them? One of the explanations is that at some point of time Muslim theologians declared that “Koran has everything”, so scientific research stopped. The legend says that under this slogan the Library of Alexandria has been burnt by Arabian conquerors.
c) There is an interesting correlation between the agricultural conditions in a certain territory and some national traits of character. That’s more than a coincidence. For example, wheat was the main crop in Europe. It doesn’t require any special irrigation, so you can well grow and harvest it alone. That means you are less dependent on other people. Hence smaller states (Germany before mid-XIX century consisted of dozens independent states), hence more independent opinions. Compare it to China. Rice requires serious irrigation works, you’ll never do it alone. In order to harvest rice, you need to organize a fairly large group of people to do a job together. And as the population grows, you need to perform those works at a larger scale, also because the easiest-to-work fields are already busy. As a result, we see that Chinese value the society more than they value an individual. A single person sacrificing his wishes for the good of the others is more acceptable for them than for Europeans.
This idea needs further thinking but it is quite possible that the liberalism and human rights developed in Western Europe to the extent we see due to a unique combination of religion, natural conditions and other factors. And it can’t be copied in other parts of the world. It can be brought to other parts of the world by immigration of people with European mentality, of course. But otherwise it can be done only by complete mentality change of local inhabitants. Not an easy task, could take generations and mean death of local culture.
- All people are seeking freedom and democracy, so it is our duty to help them achieve this goal. If some part of the society resists this help, it is the tyrannical part and it should be eliminated.
In some part such understanding is based on the theory that appeared in history (history as a science!) in the UK in 18th century. This theory states that the process of human society development over time is a) linear and b) goes through the same stages in every society of the planet. One of the consequences of this theory was the statement that every society started from matriarchate – researchers came across some primitive society, ruled by women, and made their conclusion. This theory has long been proved wrong, but its influence is still alive.
Even if we accept that all countries, all societies are aiming at maximizing human rights, how justified will interference be? Good intentions are the pathway to hell. How long it took Anglo-Saxon civilization to reach modern state of human rights? Setting the Magna Carts as the starting point, it is a bit over 800 years, roughly 30 generations. Looking at the world history, we see how slowly societies change their organizational forms, evolving one into another. And you can’t forcefully speed it up. Imagine that our modern “crusaders of democracy” take time machine and show up at Hastings early in the morning on October 14th, 1066. “William, Harold, there is no need to fight. You need to run democratic elections, and everything will be ok…” Will they even understand the idea??? And what will happen the next day after they are left alone?
You have shown significant interest in Russian culture. If you care spending some more time on Russian books, I’d recommend you brothers Strugatsky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkady_and_Boris_Strugatsky). The form of what they have written is science fiction, but the contents is all about ethics, morale, responsibility, conscience. Try «Escape Attempt», «Hard to be a God», «Overburdened with Evil».
Why I am mentioning them now is because among others they are exploring the topic of “progressors” – people from Earth of XXII century who try to speed up the history of other planets, to solve their problems, stop wars, etc. And it doesn’t end well. As one of their heroes says, “You can’t break up the natural course of history without breaking the spine of humanity.”
It’s hard to find examples of good revolutions when they are initiated from abroad. Change of regime should be supported by majority within the country – it is the guarantee that society is ready for it. What Anglo-Saxons and NATO frequently do is supporting the angry minority in its aspirations for power. And instead of peace, freedom and prosperity it brings chaos. The classic example is Libya. Over 10 years ago the country was “spared of Gaddafi’s tyrannical rule”… How do they live now? The GDP is still around 50% of what it used to be, the country is still not at peace, there are two major forces each claiming to be the legal power. How many lives it did cost already and how much time it will take free Libya to recover? Can such liberation be called anything but a disservice? In Russia we call it “bear’s help”. I don’t say that everything was good in the country when Gaddafi was alive, but aren’t they in the worse situation now?
The whole series of Arabian spring looks like a great mess, not a great success. I rely on the opinion of an expert – below is the brief translation of an article published in 2015-2016 by Mordechai Kedar, an Israeli scholar of Arab culture and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. I can’t find the original, unfortunately.
December 2015 was the fifth anniversary of the events known as an ‘Arabian spring’. The world applauded the heroes of the streets in Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain. Now, five years ago, those countries are still battlefields, with no light ahead. What problems have prevented them from positive development? Most of them have developed over centuries and they still prevail in mentality, remaining the dangerous rudiment.
- Tribalism*, that was always a survival factor in harsh natural conditions of the region. Now the conditions are different but mentality is still the same, when each person thinks of himself as a member of the clan first (family, tribe, tape, whatever…), not the citizen of the country.*
- Violence*. Resources are scarce, so anyone who is not the member of my clan, is a deadly threat. And the first reaction to a threat is violence.*
- Honour*, understood very specifically. Dishonoured person will seek revenge. It is not uncommon for a person to kill members of his own family if they dishonoured him. Honour is of primary importance in relations between countries and nations, sometimes more important than economics and healthcare.*
- Nepotism*, which has its roots in tribalism. Promoting your relatives to administrative positions is illegal in the West, but is part of normal practice in the East.*
- Corruption*. An office holder will invest in projects and regions where his tribe and supporters live, not otherwise. He feels financially responsible to his family, not to the country.*
- Multiple ethnic groups*, which protect their own languages and traditions. Marriages outside of a group are rare, coexistence with other groups is tense and hostile.*
- Islam*. Islamic extremists are sure that people who believe otherwise, are deserved to be killed.*
- Sunnites vs*.* shiites*. This conflict started back in 7th century as a conflict for control over Islam. Non-Islamic people see them analogous to Catholicism vs. Orthodox church, but in reality now, after centuries of religious wars, these are two separate religions, and the dialogue between them is very difficult.*
- Predominant culture*. Three main groups are Bedouins who live in deserts, fellahs who are the peasants, and inhabitants of the cities. Each group thinks stereotypically of other two, cross-marriages are rare.*
- Country borders*. British, French and Italian administration have been drawn the borders straight, just by a ruler and a pencil, paying no attention to the real borders between various groups which differ by religion and ethnicity. People who never thought about themselves as about having anything in common, are now the citizens of one country. And they don’t feel it this way.*
- Power change*. This is something which never happens peacefully in Arabic countries. The ethnic or religious group at power holds to it by all means.*
- Israel*. Arabs and Muslims don’t acknowledge Judaism as a live religion, Jewish people as a people. So for them the very existence of Israel is illegal. Plus Israel is very convenient as an external enemy, a good target for the aggression of the masses.*
- Oil has turned the countries of the Gulf into societies which don’t produce, but do consume without limits. The difference between wealth of the Gulf and poverty of other Arabian countries is shocking.
- West that interferes into the region to solve its own problems. Oil, gas, weapons – all is targeted to use natural resources of Middle East.
- Al Jazeera as a catalyst of social and religious unrest.
Here’s an article by the same author on the same topic – https://fathomjournal.org/why-we-keep-getting-the-middle-east-wrong/
Here’s an interview with him – https://chicagopolicyreview.org/2015/07/28/americans-still-dont-understand-the-middle-east-this-man-wants-to-help/
In one of your interviews you discussed the competition between China and the US for influence in Africa. And your opinion was that China wins due to corruption of local elites. Let me offer another reason for your consideration. It is the same reason that allows Russia to gain influence in Middle East, Africa, South America. When China or Russia come to some country to cooperate, they come to cooperate, not to teach, not to judge, not to interfere into the internal affairs of the state. And people appreciate this.
- We have the right to decide who is democratic and who is not.
De furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine.
One of the principles of democracy is separation of three powers – legislative, judicial and executive. So why then countries that consider themselves “leaders of democratic world” forget about this principle in international relations. They make the rules, they judge and they punish.
One of American diplomats said recently that USA supports international rules-based order. Sounds good, sounds undoubtedly right. But why USA and NATO forget about the rules when it is convenient? Or is it “We support international rules-based order, but our own actions should not be limited by these rules”? What immediately comes to my mind without web search:
- Kosovo, 1999. Civil war or genocide or whatever it may be called. How it should have been handled according to the rules? UN Security Council makes the decision, ‘blue helmets’ move in and stop the hot phase of the conflict. How it was done? NATO forces moved in without UNSC mandate. Forget the rules.
- Iraq, 2003. USA and its allies invaded Iraq based on false claims that Saddam had mass destruction weapons. The Center for Public Integrity stated that the Bush administration made a total of 935 false statements between 2001 and 2003 about Iraq's alleged threat to the United States. International lies-based order?
Speaking more about the rules… We are tired of seeing double standards. As an illustration, I will use just one aspect – the principle of integrity of the state vs the principle of the right of nations to self-determination. It looks like the West supports integrity of the state, when this state is allied or friendly to the West, and supports nation’s self-determination when the state is not. Let’s go through some examples.
- Chechnya (an autonomous republic within Soviet Union) wanted to become independent after 1991. It quickly started to use terrorism to achieve this goal. It took a lot of effort to stop the war and bring the region back to safety. Reaction of the West – support of chechens, their leader fled to London and was not deported to Russia despite all requests.
- Abkhazia (an autonomous republic within Georgian republic which was part of Soviet Union) wanted to become independent from Georgia when Georgia became independent from Russia. Resulted in a war. The conflict is still not solved. Abkhazia now is an independent state which is acknowledged by very few countries in the world. Reaction of the West – they still consider Abkhazia as a rebellious part of Georgia. Same situation about South Osetia – another region, that was an administrative part of Georgia until 1991 and that also seeks independence.
- Donetsk and Lugansk wanted to become independent from Ukraine after 2014 coup. Ukraine tried to subdue them by force and failed. Then the workplan has been signed in Minsk – what the parties of the conflict agree to do to settle. The result should have been – Donetsk and Lugansk return to Ukraine but have extended political rights, etc. Ukraine did nothing of its promises. Reaction of the West – support of Ukraine.
- Catalonia is seeking independence. And I remember that leaders of independence movement have been under political and criminal pressure.
- Scotland had a referendum about independence. And even though results were in favour of the UK, I remember how nervously London reacted.
Russia – NATO relations after 1991
This is best said by Vladimir Pozner, a journalist who spent years of his work in the USA, Russia, Europe and is one of the most known journalists of the old school (comparing to modern propagandists). Here’s the link to his speech in Yale University on September 27, 2018 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ&t=2556s.
His speech takes around forty minutes, the rest is the Q&A. To save you time, I’d summarize it here in just a couple of phrases. After Soviet Union collapsed, there was an illusion that we aren’t enemies anymore, that the world is open now, and that we will be partners or even friends. Russia dismissed the Warsaw Treaty union and agreed for Germany to unite, that looked just right – why keep a military union when we aren’t enemies anymore? Sometime later Russia made an offer to join NATO to provide world security together and was denied. Russia offered to join the EU, and was denied. Russia was promised that NATO would not expand eastward and less than 10 years later this promise was broken. Since then, we’ve been witnessing NATO getting closer and closer to our borders, inviting countries that are our neighbours and aggressively supporting those candidates to country leadership in East Europe who declared anti-Russia views. So now the illusion is over. We are enemies. And what’s worse – we don’t trust US anymore, so negotiating some new principles of coexistence will be problematic.
Ukraine.
Briefly about history, in more details about recent times and present situation.
In 16-17th century the territory of modern Ukraine was controlled by two forces with no clear border between them. Northwest (where the city of Lvov is now) was under Polish rule, center and the region along river Dnepr – under control of “kazak military democracies” – gatherings of all people, who fled from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Crimea and who with time formed Ukrainians as a nation. They were ruled by elected chieftains and made their living largely by either joining some military campaign for money and loot, or by robbery raids to Poland, Crimea, Turkey. They were allied to Russia due to same religion – Orthodox Christianity.
As Poland grew stronger, its pressure on the territory grew, which led to periodic rebellions. Poland is a Catholic state, and people of Orthodox Ukraine were severely oppressed. Seeking protection, Ukrainian chieftains asked Russia to include those territories into Russian state. First request came in 1591. Russia rejected this request and several others. Only in 1654 part of Ukraine, controlled by kazaks, was included into Russia. Consequences – war with Poland and tens of thousands orthodox people fleeing from Polish-controlled lands into Russian-controlled lands.
From then on Russians and Ukrainians were really ‘brother nations’. Well, it was not heaven, but it was the best available option. Same religion, very close language and mentality. And forget about oppression. Ukrainians were oppressed as much as Russians themselves.
When the WW I started, Germany and Austria-Hungary were looking for collaborators in occupied territories of Russian Empire. They promised independence to nationalists in Western Ukraine, and found people who bought the idea. Not surprisingly, the most dedicated nationalists came from the least developed region of the country. Ukraine did not become independent at that moment, but the ideas stayed and gave their fruit during WW II, when Ukrainian collaborators actively participated in Nazis’ crimes. In one of your videos you described what Unit 731 of Japanese army was doing and you warned your listeners that they will never forget it. If you will find and read witnesses’ accounts of Volhynia massacre, you will never forget it either. I read it once long ago and I never want to read it again. It was a shock to me that people are capable of such things.
In the period between 1945 and 1991 Ukraine had the same rights as any other republic. There were no impediments to preserving and developing local culture. If you lived in any republic, you learned two languages – Russian and local. National literature was actively translated into other national languages of the Soviet Union, there were no impediments to education. Soviet Union with all its flaws, really tried to unite all of its nations into one big family. (What surprises me though is why antisemitism remained. You could come from Georgia, Uzbekistan or Yakutia and pass exams to Moscow university, no problem if you are smart enough. But it could be problematic for a Jew…)
After 1991 Russia and Ukraine remained friendly states, tightly bound by economic, cultural and even family ties. Ukraine tried to get the most out of relations both with Russia and with the West and it worked fairly well for 30 years. But with time attempts to elevate significance of their own nation led Ukrainians down a dangerous path. They started to slowly eliminate all other cultures that were present in the country. This process sped up dramatically in 2014, when after a coup the nationalist forces gained influence on the government.
Official Kiev denies being nationalistic, but don’t trust what the person is saying, see what he is doing.
- Open Kiev map and you will find two prospects – one named after Bandera, another after Shukhevich. Those two stand behind Volhynia massacre and numerous other crimes. Now they are heroes.
- During WW II Ukrainian nationalists were gathered by Nazis into the division “Galicia”. Collaborators and traitors, they did not show much on the battlefield, but were always victorious in the punitive raids against civilians. Now they are heroes.
- Ukraine is banning and denying Russian language and Russian culture. And it did not start last year. It started much earlier, when bit by bit Russian-speaking people had more and more difficulties teaching their children in Russian, buying books in Russian. It even shows itself historically – famous writers, artists, musicians, etc. of the past are proclaimed Ukrainians if they were born or lived on the territory of modern Ukraine. Aivazovskiy was Armenian by nation, lived in Crimea which was Russian at the time. Repin was Russian, Kuingi was Greek. Gogol and Bulgakov called themselves Russian and wrote in Russian. Shevchenko wrote in Russian, and now his books in Ukraine are translated from Russian.
We see those nationalistic ideas demonstrating themselves in a number of ways, and we have seen them before and we know what threat they can bring if left unattended. Pay attention to a dragon when it is small, you may be unable to win when it grows up.
I don’t say that our perception is correct, I just say how we see it. And to us modern Ukraine is like a younger brother who joined a bad company and who is becoming dangerous.
Now combine these two. Ukrainian nationalism plus NATO. Two threats, one well known historically, another the most dangerous rival of the past 70 years. We see them uniting and it is really an existential threat to us. In such circumstances could we afford being blind to it, just sitting and waiting what comes next? We tried to settle it peacefully. Many times Russia said that we are worried by NATO expansion, that we are worried by Western support of nationalistic movements in our neigbour countries. No effect. The last attempt was made in autumn of 2021, when Putin offered a negotiation that should have resulted in guaranteed safety. No reply.
If there is a conflict and your rival refuses to talk, he is asking for a fight. I don’t say that war in Ukraine is the right way to solve the conflict, but who can say that we did not try to set it by negotiations?
2023.06.02 22:50 commissarcainrecaff "No lowball offers!"
 | Weekend build of a Tamiya 1:12 CB900. Painted to match the state and colour of my old CB250N when I sold it 23 years ago- even down to the horrible seat and not-so-mysterious oil leaks. Number plate was from my first Honda when I was 16. submitted by commissarcainrecaff to Scalemodel [link] [comments] |
2023.06.02 22:42 angrycollegekid1 Do the 4 cylinder 2000 honda accords have bad automatic transmissions or just the v6 version?
submitted by angrycollegekid1 to MechanicAdvice [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 22:39 jayce_m8 Is This Normal?
 | So it’s summer time, things are warming up. And so is my engine. Whenever I turn the AC on, the temperature gauge goes up. submitted by jayce_m8 to Cartalk [link] [comments] Attached are two photos. The first one is its normal reading with AC off, the second one is the highest I’ve seen it go when the AC is on. I don’t see any leaks right off the bat from underneath, besides condensation, or from under the hood. The radiator fans are working and the engine doesn’t idle very rough or anything. Is it normal for this to happen? Especially when it’s hot outside? (like +85 degrees Fahrenheit) Also all fluids appear normal and this is a 2006 Honda Accord EX Sedan with 196,550 miles on it. |
2023.06.02 22:04 Grandemestizo If you live in the United States, you should know the basics of car maintenance and repair.
We rely on cars for our daily lives, yet the number of people who have no idea how to do basic maintenance or repairs on their car is amazingly high. People will spend 40k on a car then just trash it in 5-10 years by not maintaining it properly. They’ll get robbed by dealerships and shady mechanics spending hundreds or thousands of dollars for basic repairs they can do themselves.
Cars aren’t these arcane machines held together by secret incantations. They are, for the most part, a bunch of fairly simple parts bolted together. Brakes wear out? Easy, just a few bolts and some parts from autozone. Alternator go? Same thing. Fan belt need replacing? Tie rod? Coolant leak? Shocks? Wheel bearing? Spark plugs? Battery? Fuse? Oil? Brake fluid? All these things are simple to do yourself.
Go buy a set of wrenches and go to YouTube. If you’re driving a reasonably common vehicle and making a reasonably common repair there will be a step by step guide.
submitted by Grandemestizo to TrueUnpopularOpinion [link] [comments]
Cars aren’t these arcane machines held together by secret incantations. They are, for the most part, a bunch of fairly simple parts bolted together. Brakes wear out? Easy, just a few bolts and some parts from autozone. Alternator go? Same thing. Fan belt need replacing? Tie rod? Coolant leak? Shocks? Wheel bearing? Spark plugs? Battery? Fuse? Oil? Brake fluid? All these things are simple to do yourself.
Go buy a set of wrenches and go to YouTube. If you’re driving a reasonably common vehicle and making a reasonably common repair there will be a step by step guide.
2023.06.02 21:26 Archives-H I work for a company that studies cursed places. We uncovered a mass grave site of over 200 people.
My name is Canopy Hydrangea. I recover cursed artifacts, explore haunted places, and report back the information needed to the people I work for. The Company then arranged what has to be done to remove these blemishes from the world.
If it isn't possible, we make sure the evil of cursed artifacts and bizarre places doesn’t make it’s way to the general public.
But sometimes, it’s important to leak a report or two to the unsuspecting public. Makes for a good warning- and this particular file is one of many that must be known.
“Do you have clearance?” asked a young man, hat with a carefully embroidered VII obscuring his face. He held out a little notepad with tables for signatures labeled ‘sign-ins and security’. “We can’t have anyone here without proper clearance.”
I sighed and took the pen that was attached to the pad. “Of course I have clearance,” I said. “I’m the one supposed to be in charge of this damn operation.”
He looked at me in confusion. So did I. I was told by the Company’s board members this specific location was assigned to me. And yet, my team was clearly not the first ones there.
This wasn’t what we were promised. Not by a long stretch. “I was told Varaluz was in charge.” he pointed over to a bulkier man in camouflage gear, director agents of the Company around the dig site.
Varaluz. Of course he was here- he was always getting in people’s business. “Am I being subjected to an internal security probe?” I looked him in the eye. “Right now? Right here?”
The meek young man hesitated and backed away. “See, your previous assignment against the House of Lorreno has some of us in the Company…” he chose his words carefully, “doubting your status.”
This was no issue. I just wanted control of the dig site back in my hands- after all, I was the one sent to study it. And my team. “No problem.”
So let’s talk about the dig site. The mass grave that, as I was told by my historian Kyran, contained the corpses of over 200 skeletons, and counting. “254,” he mused, counting again. “And some aren’t human.”
I asked him about it. And then I saw the bones for myself.
They, at first, looked like the bones of children. But on closer inspection found them all to be distinctly serrated. Their skulls were a bit too flat and wide to truly be human, and what was more bizarre were the limbs.
Each non-human remain had eight limbs, all that seemed like the legs and feet of ordinary human body; obviously inhuman, and the way they were connected told me this wasn’t some post-mortem ritual that positioned the bodies like so after death.
No. This was the real deal- dozens of dead, non-human entities that perplexed and sent chills up my spine.
And the skulls. The damn skulls were like they were smiling, of all things. And instead of two eye sockets there were four.
I also noted the sharp pines of wood that impaled the skeletons. “What’s with that?” Even before asking the aura of something… powerful emanated from the bones.
My assistant, Rainie, had an answer. “We suspect they may not be fully dead,” she informed. “We’re doing our best not to er, dislodge the wood until we can get a priest to put them at rest.”
I knelt down near one of the many impaled creatures and observed it. Distinct markings were present. I took off a glove off and touched it, feeling the history within it.
Sparks of violence. War. Famine. An ember of something not entirely dark I could not place. It unnerved me. “How long until we can put them at rest.”
“Well, we haven’t figured out what religion this place aligns to,” she pointed out. This was true- if we invited the wrong priest to bless the place it could invoke the opposite of peaceful rest. “And you haven’t even seen the staircase.”
“The what?”
The mass grave was discovered by an oil company looking to drill new ground. When the reports of the unusual remains came in, a report was handed over to me and my team, and we were sent to eliminate the disturbance, remove all evidence of the bizarre and hand it back over to the oilmen.
The bodies were found in concentric trenches, squares. There were about five, each within another, and a sixth being uncovered by the dig team.
In the center of the squares was a small ruin, a large jutting cylinder with a door. Beyond this door was a spiral staircase of stone, seemingly cut in by the ancient builders of the grave site so many centuries ago.
Varaluz, the internal security inspector, awaited me there. “Canopy,” he greeted, extending a hand. He peered into the staircase, holding out strong, twisted rope. “We’ve got four assets who’ll be out just about-” a man, panicked, rope attached to his waist scrambled out, hyperventilating.
He was in standard prison garb. As usual- we often used death row prisoners to explore new, dangerous territory.
He started to ramble about a shape in the darkness, and something about pages and a book. “Sir,” asked a woman, placing the man under handcuffs. “What should we do with him?”
“Remove him,” Varaluz ordered.
She looked at both of us, puzzled. “Like, kill him?”
Varaluz shook his head. “Don’t be silly- we need to know what he saw down there- extract his memories, then have the handlers do what they please.”
Yuck.
Memory extraction was something I hated to see. A needle laced with symbols and science, injected into the center of the eye. It would then extract memories to be read by a rather interesting-looking book.
The prisoner would then develop amnesia for a while, but that was no issue. The prisoners we worked with for these excursions were often terrible, irredeemable people.
Varaluz and his team informed me of what they had discovered, just as three Company agents entered the depths, rope tied along their waists.
The staircase was seemingly endless, according to two other excursion teams they had sent into the depths.
The first team had only been equipped by a radio and led by an agent of the Company, but after an hour dropped from radio contact. After another hour, they should have returned- yet they had vanished into the depths.
A rescue operation was made- equipped with rope, Varaluz sent in a team of prisoners led by a more experienced agent into the depths.
Oddly enough, the initial agent leader stumbled back out, informing us the passage had shifted, and they had across a labyrinth underneath the entire dig site- some sort of temple.
Video footage revealed the place was a hellhole. There were signs of life, but twisted, impossible things- strange fungal matter and the bones of long dead creatures- and something else, still active.
This active entity, according to the survivor, seemed to work in tandem with the stairway, dislodging stairs, sending one prisoner falling into the abyss. Another was seemingly sucked into the walls of the place.
The last simply faded, and that was when the agent started to evacuate.
The rescue team came back, fully intact. They hadn’t encountered nay such temple, merely more of the same: staircases, illuminated by the light to be made of bone.
Subsequent testing informed us the bones were human.
“Okay, I want-” as soon as I was about to say I wanted to enter the staircase the line snapped. “Whoa!”
Varaluz held on, and two agents joined him. “It’s being- pulled!” he turned to me.
I retreated to a machine the rope was connected to and selected a button labeled ‘retract’. “This should-” it started to pull against whatever was on the other end- but it was straining, “work.”
The machine started to creak, and the bulky thing began to move against itself. “Security!” Varaluz ordered. “Get the hell over here- now!”
That’s when the line loosened and pulled back, and blood came flying from the abyss. Two bodies- no- a torso and a set of legs, rope still attached flew out, nearly splattering us with blood.
A man came running out, splattered in the blood of his friends. “There’s something down there-” he said it with such fear I started what lurked in the shadows, “it- it was like those bones!”
A growl emerged from deep within. My assistant, Rainie came up to me. “Sir, should we seal it up?” she gestured to security, already prepared to request explosives.
I thought about this for a moment. “Not yet, no,” I decided. “We don’t know if sealing it up will work.”
Whatever was inside- it was powerful. So I decided we needed a proper operation into the temple. With actual agents. “Rainie,” I began, “have the rest of the team meet me here- we’re going in.”
Reckless? Maybe. But if what was inside was a threat to humanity- it needed to be neutralized, captured, and sealed away. “By the way,” she started, “we’ve identified the ruin.”
My eyes lit up. “Can we get a priest?” The sooner we could remove the undead bones from the site the safer I’d feel.
“Already have one,” she hesitated. “But…”
“But?”
She sighed and pointed to the outskirts, where a rather fancy motorcycle had arrived. “It’s Quincy Kieni.”
Quincy Kieni was a rather eccentric figure in the cursed artifact black market. He was both an asset, working for us, telling us the details of when a major deal would go down- and an enemy.
His faith to Calayu, the Salamander King made him have so called ‘prophecies’ over when to help us and when to suddenly disappear off the grid.
I made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a sigh of annoyance. “Of course it’s him.” I watched as the man with black tinted glasses and fiery red hair waltz about the gravesite, raising his hands up and dancing.
Within the hour my team was ready.
I, Canopy Hydrangea would lead them in, coordinate our actions. My expertise in psychically sensing the bizarre would come in handy, if it need be, and the few spells I’d learned.
Then there was Rainie- my assistant, who had reviewed the tapes and studied all too many places similar to this. Of course, there was Kyran, my main security guy, and today, we would be joined by the rather annoying Quincy.
There were others, but I didn’t want to lead a large team.
So we entered the depths. Varaluz attached a rope to us, connecting it to the large bulky machine in case something attempted to pull us in. And then we were set, and so we began the journey into the depths of the pit.
“Canopy, we meet again!” Quincy cheered. “I didn’t know you were in the business of exploring new and exciting places.”
“And I thought you’d finally gotten yourself killed for good,” I chided. “After the whole Stet’Kai incident.”
He laughed maniacally at that, and the noise reverberated around the walls. “Were you demoted as a result of, who were they?” he thought. “Lorreno’s team?”
“None of your business,” Kyran cut in. He held up a hand. “I hear something.”
We all silenced ourselves- even the bothersome Quincy. There was a dull growl in the background, and the clicking of insects- no- “Automata,” Rainie identified. “Temples of the Salamander have automaton.”
Machines given life through ancient magic. Not a huge problem.
The next hour was rather boring, and we continued in silence, fearing disturbing one of the more dangerous security automata. Sure, machines weren’t as dangerous as any live creatures- but still a threat nonetheless.
“Hold it!” Quincy shouted. We all stopped. He stepped ahead and knelt down, inspecting the step in front of me. He spoke something I couldn’t understand, and symbols appeared, and we heard the clicking of gears. “It’s a classic pitfall trap.”
I remembered Varaluz’s prisoners. The story about the place working against them. “Who,” Rainie posited, “built this place?”
“It is a Temple of the Salamander,” I reminded. “But those bones up there don’t match anything we have on record.”
Quincy ordered another stop, and chanted- and a wall beside us faded away, revealing a hallway. “Now that’s the temple.”
I noted the images and statues, “And I think I know who built this place.”
Satyrs. The statues were satyrs, half-man half-goat creatures spotted throughout mythology and ancient times. We knew them, life many other of the ancient kinds, to be extinct.
Long dead. But the statues of the Satyrs here seemed different, more human than beast somehow. They lined the hall, facing away from us, bowing to a large statue of a salamander, an eternal flame still burning within its mouth.
“Look!” Kryan commanded, raising his gun. A machine, moving as if it were alive, appeared in the distance. “It looks just like those bones.”
No. It was made from the bones that had been dug up and the eight limbed thing came charging at us. Kyran fired, to no effect, before Quincy stepped out and clapped, uttering a single word.
The machinery grinded to a halt and collapsed; I was right- it had been made from the bones of the things above, strapped to gears and circuitry.
Whatever those things were, the worshippers below had clearly venerated them enough to create frankenstein-like beasts in their fashion. “Well that was… not at cool as I thought it’d be.” Kyran shrugged.
“And,” Rainie added, gesturing to the statue, “looks like that’s a sort of artifact we’ll want to secure.” In the mouth of the Salamander statue, was the flame- and as I studied it- I realized it was a book that was burning.
Quincy put the flames out and handed the warm pages to me. This was powerful alright. I reached into the ether and felt that it contained great animosity, malevolence- something insane.
“Now,” Quincy murmured, “I don’t want to alarm you, but-” the walls started to creak, and they began to slowly move downwards, threatening to crush us, “we are at risk of immediate death.”
We ran out of the temple and back on the stairs, which were now starting to shake, and crumble. Quincy quick-casted some spell, and we ran, tugging on the rope.
Varaluz, despite my opinions towards him, was skilled, effective, and he activated the machine pulling us in, just as the steps collapsed. The rope hung in midair, slowly drifting upwards.
By the end of the hour we were out. I gave Varaluz the details. The mass grave had completely been excavated, and all the skeletons sent to facility deep within the clutches of the Company.
More research would be done by a secondary team, but the immediate danger was neutralized. The automata, traps, and all had been disabled by Quincy, and the temple, according to a scan, had largely collapsed.
But there was something underneath it- a second temple that mirrored the concentric squares of the graves, ready to be excavated and revealed. And according to an initial scan- there were life signs inside.
That, I assume, was where the real treasures were hiding.
But that isn’t my business. The initial first contact was made, the fears within stabilized. My job there was done; another day was complete. The unexplained was eliminated, and I was ready to move on another excursion.
The world is filled with places like these. And I’m just one of many who work to keep these hidden away. We keep the public safe. It’s what we do.
submitted by Archives-H to nosleep [link] [comments]
If it isn't possible, we make sure the evil of cursed artifacts and bizarre places doesn’t make it’s way to the general public.
But sometimes, it’s important to leak a report or two to the unsuspecting public. Makes for a good warning- and this particular file is one of many that must be known.
“Do you have clearance?” asked a young man, hat with a carefully embroidered VII obscuring his face. He held out a little notepad with tables for signatures labeled ‘sign-ins and security’. “We can’t have anyone here without proper clearance.”
I sighed and took the pen that was attached to the pad. “Of course I have clearance,” I said. “I’m the one supposed to be in charge of this damn operation.”
He looked at me in confusion. So did I. I was told by the Company’s board members this specific location was assigned to me. And yet, my team was clearly not the first ones there.
This wasn’t what we were promised. Not by a long stretch. “I was told Varaluz was in charge.” he pointed over to a bulkier man in camouflage gear, director agents of the Company around the dig site.
Varaluz. Of course he was here- he was always getting in people’s business. “Am I being subjected to an internal security probe?” I looked him in the eye. “Right now? Right here?”
The meek young man hesitated and backed away. “See, your previous assignment against the House of Lorreno has some of us in the Company…” he chose his words carefully, “doubting your status.”
This was no issue. I just wanted control of the dig site back in my hands- after all, I was the one sent to study it. And my team. “No problem.”
So let’s talk about the dig site. The mass grave that, as I was told by my historian Kyran, contained the corpses of over 200 skeletons, and counting. “254,” he mused, counting again. “And some aren’t human.”
I asked him about it. And then I saw the bones for myself.
They, at first, looked like the bones of children. But on closer inspection found them all to be distinctly serrated. Their skulls were a bit too flat and wide to truly be human, and what was more bizarre were the limbs.
Each non-human remain had eight limbs, all that seemed like the legs and feet of ordinary human body; obviously inhuman, and the way they were connected told me this wasn’t some post-mortem ritual that positioned the bodies like so after death.
No. This was the real deal- dozens of dead, non-human entities that perplexed and sent chills up my spine.
And the skulls. The damn skulls were like they were smiling, of all things. And instead of two eye sockets there were four.
I also noted the sharp pines of wood that impaled the skeletons. “What’s with that?” Even before asking the aura of something… powerful emanated from the bones.
My assistant, Rainie, had an answer. “We suspect they may not be fully dead,” she informed. “We’re doing our best not to er, dislodge the wood until we can get a priest to put them at rest.”
I knelt down near one of the many impaled creatures and observed it. Distinct markings were present. I took off a glove off and touched it, feeling the history within it.
Sparks of violence. War. Famine. An ember of something not entirely dark I could not place. It unnerved me. “How long until we can put them at rest.”
“Well, we haven’t figured out what religion this place aligns to,” she pointed out. This was true- if we invited the wrong priest to bless the place it could invoke the opposite of peaceful rest. “And you haven’t even seen the staircase.”
“The what?”
The mass grave was discovered by an oil company looking to drill new ground. When the reports of the unusual remains came in, a report was handed over to me and my team, and we were sent to eliminate the disturbance, remove all evidence of the bizarre and hand it back over to the oilmen.
The bodies were found in concentric trenches, squares. There were about five, each within another, and a sixth being uncovered by the dig team.
In the center of the squares was a small ruin, a large jutting cylinder with a door. Beyond this door was a spiral staircase of stone, seemingly cut in by the ancient builders of the grave site so many centuries ago.
Varaluz, the internal security inspector, awaited me there. “Canopy,” he greeted, extending a hand. He peered into the staircase, holding out strong, twisted rope. “We’ve got four assets who’ll be out just about-” a man, panicked, rope attached to his waist scrambled out, hyperventilating.
He was in standard prison garb. As usual- we often used death row prisoners to explore new, dangerous territory.
He started to ramble about a shape in the darkness, and something about pages and a book. “Sir,” asked a woman, placing the man under handcuffs. “What should we do with him?”
“Remove him,” Varaluz ordered.
She looked at both of us, puzzled. “Like, kill him?”
Varaluz shook his head. “Don’t be silly- we need to know what he saw down there- extract his memories, then have the handlers do what they please.”
Yuck.
Memory extraction was something I hated to see. A needle laced with symbols and science, injected into the center of the eye. It would then extract memories to be read by a rather interesting-looking book.
The prisoner would then develop amnesia for a while, but that was no issue. The prisoners we worked with for these excursions were often terrible, irredeemable people.
Varaluz and his team informed me of what they had discovered, just as three Company agents entered the depths, rope tied along their waists.
The staircase was seemingly endless, according to two other excursion teams they had sent into the depths.
The first team had only been equipped by a radio and led by an agent of the Company, but after an hour dropped from radio contact. After another hour, they should have returned- yet they had vanished into the depths.
A rescue operation was made- equipped with rope, Varaluz sent in a team of prisoners led by a more experienced agent into the depths.
Oddly enough, the initial agent leader stumbled back out, informing us the passage had shifted, and they had across a labyrinth underneath the entire dig site- some sort of temple.
Video footage revealed the place was a hellhole. There were signs of life, but twisted, impossible things- strange fungal matter and the bones of long dead creatures- and something else, still active.
This active entity, according to the survivor, seemed to work in tandem with the stairway, dislodging stairs, sending one prisoner falling into the abyss. Another was seemingly sucked into the walls of the place.
The last simply faded, and that was when the agent started to evacuate.
The rescue team came back, fully intact. They hadn’t encountered nay such temple, merely more of the same: staircases, illuminated by the light to be made of bone.
Subsequent testing informed us the bones were human.
“Okay, I want-” as soon as I was about to say I wanted to enter the staircase the line snapped. “Whoa!”
Varaluz held on, and two agents joined him. “It’s being- pulled!” he turned to me.
I retreated to a machine the rope was connected to and selected a button labeled ‘retract’. “This should-” it started to pull against whatever was on the other end- but it was straining, “work.”
The machine started to creak, and the bulky thing began to move against itself. “Security!” Varaluz ordered. “Get the hell over here- now!”
That’s when the line loosened and pulled back, and blood came flying from the abyss. Two bodies- no- a torso and a set of legs, rope still attached flew out, nearly splattering us with blood.
A man came running out, splattered in the blood of his friends. “There’s something down there-” he said it with such fear I started what lurked in the shadows, “it- it was like those bones!”
A growl emerged from deep within. My assistant, Rainie came up to me. “Sir, should we seal it up?” she gestured to security, already prepared to request explosives.
I thought about this for a moment. “Not yet, no,” I decided. “We don’t know if sealing it up will work.”
Whatever was inside- it was powerful. So I decided we needed a proper operation into the temple. With actual agents. “Rainie,” I began, “have the rest of the team meet me here- we’re going in.”
Reckless? Maybe. But if what was inside was a threat to humanity- it needed to be neutralized, captured, and sealed away. “By the way,” she started, “we’ve identified the ruin.”
My eyes lit up. “Can we get a priest?” The sooner we could remove the undead bones from the site the safer I’d feel.
“Already have one,” she hesitated. “But…”
“But?”
She sighed and pointed to the outskirts, where a rather fancy motorcycle had arrived. “It’s Quincy Kieni.”
Quincy Kieni was a rather eccentric figure in the cursed artifact black market. He was both an asset, working for us, telling us the details of when a major deal would go down- and an enemy.
His faith to Calayu, the Salamander King made him have so called ‘prophecies’ over when to help us and when to suddenly disappear off the grid.
I made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a sigh of annoyance. “Of course it’s him.” I watched as the man with black tinted glasses and fiery red hair waltz about the gravesite, raising his hands up and dancing.
Within the hour my team was ready.
I, Canopy Hydrangea would lead them in, coordinate our actions. My expertise in psychically sensing the bizarre would come in handy, if it need be, and the few spells I’d learned.
Then there was Rainie- my assistant, who had reviewed the tapes and studied all too many places similar to this. Of course, there was Kyran, my main security guy, and today, we would be joined by the rather annoying Quincy.
There were others, but I didn’t want to lead a large team.
So we entered the depths. Varaluz attached a rope to us, connecting it to the large bulky machine in case something attempted to pull us in. And then we were set, and so we began the journey into the depths of the pit.
“Canopy, we meet again!” Quincy cheered. “I didn’t know you were in the business of exploring new and exciting places.”
“And I thought you’d finally gotten yourself killed for good,” I chided. “After the whole Stet’Kai incident.”
He laughed maniacally at that, and the noise reverberated around the walls. “Were you demoted as a result of, who were they?” he thought. “Lorreno’s team?”
“None of your business,” Kyran cut in. He held up a hand. “I hear something.”
We all silenced ourselves- even the bothersome Quincy. There was a dull growl in the background, and the clicking of insects- no- “Automata,” Rainie identified. “Temples of the Salamander have automaton.”
Machines given life through ancient magic. Not a huge problem.
The next hour was rather boring, and we continued in silence, fearing disturbing one of the more dangerous security automata. Sure, machines weren’t as dangerous as any live creatures- but still a threat nonetheless.
“Hold it!” Quincy shouted. We all stopped. He stepped ahead and knelt down, inspecting the step in front of me. He spoke something I couldn’t understand, and symbols appeared, and we heard the clicking of gears. “It’s a classic pitfall trap.”
I remembered Varaluz’s prisoners. The story about the place working against them. “Who,” Rainie posited, “built this place?”
“It is a Temple of the Salamander,” I reminded. “But those bones up there don’t match anything we have on record.”
Quincy ordered another stop, and chanted- and a wall beside us faded away, revealing a hallway. “Now that’s the temple.”
I noted the images and statues, “And I think I know who built this place.”
Satyrs. The statues were satyrs, half-man half-goat creatures spotted throughout mythology and ancient times. We knew them, life many other of the ancient kinds, to be extinct.
Long dead. But the statues of the Satyrs here seemed different, more human than beast somehow. They lined the hall, facing away from us, bowing to a large statue of a salamander, an eternal flame still burning within its mouth.
“Look!” Kryan commanded, raising his gun. A machine, moving as if it were alive, appeared in the distance. “It looks just like those bones.”
No. It was made from the bones that had been dug up and the eight limbed thing came charging at us. Kyran fired, to no effect, before Quincy stepped out and clapped, uttering a single word.
The machinery grinded to a halt and collapsed; I was right- it had been made from the bones of the things above, strapped to gears and circuitry.
Whatever those things were, the worshippers below had clearly venerated them enough to create frankenstein-like beasts in their fashion. “Well that was… not at cool as I thought it’d be.” Kyran shrugged.
“And,” Rainie added, gesturing to the statue, “looks like that’s a sort of artifact we’ll want to secure.” In the mouth of the Salamander statue, was the flame- and as I studied it- I realized it was a book that was burning.
Quincy put the flames out and handed the warm pages to me. This was powerful alright. I reached into the ether and felt that it contained great animosity, malevolence- something insane.
“Now,” Quincy murmured, “I don’t want to alarm you, but-” the walls started to creak, and they began to slowly move downwards, threatening to crush us, “we are at risk of immediate death.”
We ran out of the temple and back on the stairs, which were now starting to shake, and crumble. Quincy quick-casted some spell, and we ran, tugging on the rope.
Varaluz, despite my opinions towards him, was skilled, effective, and he activated the machine pulling us in, just as the steps collapsed. The rope hung in midair, slowly drifting upwards.
By the end of the hour we were out. I gave Varaluz the details. The mass grave had completely been excavated, and all the skeletons sent to facility deep within the clutches of the Company.
More research would be done by a secondary team, but the immediate danger was neutralized. The automata, traps, and all had been disabled by Quincy, and the temple, according to a scan, had largely collapsed.
But there was something underneath it- a second temple that mirrored the concentric squares of the graves, ready to be excavated and revealed. And according to an initial scan- there were life signs inside.
That, I assume, was where the real treasures were hiding.
But that isn’t my business. The initial first contact was made, the fears within stabilized. My job there was done; another day was complete. The unexplained was eliminated, and I was ready to move on another excursion.
The world is filled with places like these. And I’m just one of many who work to keep these hidden away. We keep the public safe. It’s what we do.
2023.06.02 20:56 LIS1050010 Guide: How to Grow Your Own Food
For all of human history, people have managed to feed themselves, either by fishing, hunting, gathering, or subsistence farming. Nowadays, we can simply head to the grocery store to buy our meals. However, growing your own food is both rewarding and money-saving. If you’d like to grow your own food, make sure you research the climate in your region, create rows for your crops, and harvest when your food is ripe to enjoy the food from your garden.
Plant fruit in the early spring in a moderate climate. Most fruit, like apples, oranges, lemons, and limes can be grown on trees in a 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2) area. Start with planting a fruit tree in a pot to monitor the soil and water intake, and then transfer it to the ground after 1 year during the early spring. Most fruit trees will not start bearing fruit until they are 2 to 3 years old.
Lay rows with a hoe or a plow. Mark out the area you intend to plant. Use a hoe or plow to create a slightly raised bed in the loose soil in a line across the length of the plot. Next, make a shallow groove cut in the soil with your rototiller and a furrow attachment. Do this until your growing area is covered in rows.
Tip: Make a peppermint spray by combining 2 drops of peppermint essential oil and 1 gallon (3,800 mL) of water. Mist the leaves of your crops once a day to keep common insects away.
Harvest your crops when they are ripe. Many common garden vegetables are harvested as they become ripe, and continue to produce throughout the growing season with proper care. Grains, on the other hand, are most often harvested when they are fully ripened and dry on the plant. Use sharp, clean gardening tools to pick or cut your crops so you don’t damage the plants.
Preserve your food if you can’t eat it all. If you have grown grains, use barns which will keep your stored harvest dry and safe from insects and vermin. A combination of storage and preservation methods are the best way to reduce food waste. Drying, canning, freezing, and bedding are all viable options for storing food.
Article Source
submitted by LIS1050010 to selfreliance [link] [comments]
Growing Food in Your Climate
Grow most leafy greens and vegetables during a warm summer. If you have temperatures above 75 °F (24 °C) during the summer, plant your vegetable crops in May or June. Make sure they are planted after the threat of frost is over.- Lettuce, cabbage, kale, and tomatoes are all great options to plant in the summer.
Plant fruit in the early spring in a moderate climate. Most fruit, like apples, oranges, lemons, and limes can be grown on trees in a 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2) area. Start with planting a fruit tree in a pot to monitor the soil and water intake, and then transfer it to the ground after 1 year during the early spring. Most fruit trees will not start bearing fruit until they are 2 to 3 years old.
- Vine fruits, like grapes, can be grown anywhere with a trellis that they can climb.
- Winter grains will usually give a higher crop yield than summer grains.
- Rice needs a tropical climate to grow. Southeast Asia is the best climate for rice crops.
Planting Crops
Make sure your soil pH is between 5.5 and 7.0. Test the pH of your soil by using a test probe or paper strips to determine the acidity or alkalinity of your soil. Most food grows at a pH of 5.5 and 7.0. If your soil is below 5.5, add dolomite, a type of crushed mineral, to make it more basic. If it is higher than 7.0, use pine needles or peat moss to make it more acidic.- You can find a test probe or strips at most garden stores.
- You can buy dolomite at most garden stores.
- To sustain a 4-person family, use 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2) of land to grow vegetables and grains.
Lay rows with a hoe or a plow. Mark out the area you intend to plant. Use a hoe or plow to create a slightly raised bed in the loose soil in a line across the length of the plot. Next, make a shallow groove cut in the soil with your rototiller and a furrow attachment. Do this until your growing area is covered in rows.
- You can rent rototillers and their attachments at many hardware stores.
- Plants like legumes and melons, squash, cucumbers are planted between 3⁄4 inch (1.9 cm) and 1 inch (2.5 cm) deep, and corn and potatoes may be planted 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) to 3.5 inches (8.9 cm) deep.
- You can also start seeds indoors and transplant them after they have sprouted.
Managing and Harvesting Your Crops
Water your garden every day during the summer. The sun can dry out and kill your crops if they do not have enough water to replenish themselves. Use a garden hose or a sprinkler system to water your crops thoroughly every day from May to September. If the temperature reaches above 90 °F (32 °C), water your crops twice a day.- Winter crops like rye do not need to be watered unless it is a particularly dry winter.
- Weeds are much easier to pull in loose or wet soil.
- Try not to disturb the roots of your crop as you weed.
Tip: Make a peppermint spray by combining 2 drops of peppermint essential oil and 1 gallon (3,800 mL) of water. Mist the leaves of your crops once a day to keep common insects away.
Harvest your crops when they are ripe. Many common garden vegetables are harvested as they become ripe, and continue to produce throughout the growing season with proper care. Grains, on the other hand, are most often harvested when they are fully ripened and dry on the plant. Use sharp, clean gardening tools to pick or cut your crops so you don’t damage the plants.
Preserve your food if you can’t eat it all. If you have grown grains, use barns which will keep your stored harvest dry and safe from insects and vermin. A combination of storage and preservation methods are the best way to reduce food waste. Drying, canning, freezing, and bedding are all viable options for storing food.
- Bedding is a method for storing root crops such as potatoes, rutabagas, and beets. Lay your root crops in a dry, cool location on a straw bed.
Article Source
2023.06.02 19:49 timyo313 FORD ECOBOOST ENGINES SHOULD GET 5K MILE OIL CHANGES.. May Trigger Some
Just some info from a Ford Tech/ YouTuber I thought was quite interesting, I’ve always stuck to 5k oil change and I never wait for the car to tell me I need an oil change either by then it’s way to late.
These motors not just mustang but all Ford Ecoboost are very demanding in terms up maintenance upkeep. This guy addresses carbon deposits and how to clean them up, coolant intrusion issues, smoking engines, rattling noises, and coolant leaks, to name just a few. The longer you run your oil the more you risk clogging up your turbo oil lines and more letting deposits stick around causing rough idle, poor mileage the list goes on. A lot of first time owners of a boosted car are more often than not uneducated on the inter workings and the do’s and don’ts, they seek information and get a lot of misinformation that could potentially put their cars at risk. Always best to practice regular maintenance and drive safe!
Quote From Article “many of the problematic vehicles that roll into his shop only have issues because of a lack of proper maintenance, and that includes the twin-turbocharged Ford 3.5L V6 EcoBoost engine that’s there right now. This particular Ford EcoBoost powerplant has a healthy 224,000 miles on it, but as our resident tech points out, these engines are good for 300k or more if maintained properly.”
https://fordauthority.com/2023/05/ford-ecoboost-engines-should-get-5k-mile-oil-changes-video/
Give this article a quick read his video is posted on the page.
submitted by timyo313 to ecoboostmustang [link] [comments]
These motors not just mustang but all Ford Ecoboost are very demanding in terms up maintenance upkeep. This guy addresses carbon deposits and how to clean them up, coolant intrusion issues, smoking engines, rattling noises, and coolant leaks, to name just a few. The longer you run your oil the more you risk clogging up your turbo oil lines and more letting deposits stick around causing rough idle, poor mileage the list goes on. A lot of first time owners of a boosted car are more often than not uneducated on the inter workings and the do’s and don’ts, they seek information and get a lot of misinformation that could potentially put their cars at risk. Always best to practice regular maintenance and drive safe!
Quote From Article “many of the problematic vehicles that roll into his shop only have issues because of a lack of proper maintenance, and that includes the twin-turbocharged Ford 3.5L V6 EcoBoost engine that’s there right now. This particular Ford EcoBoost powerplant has a healthy 224,000 miles on it, but as our resident tech points out, these engines are good for 300k or more if maintained properly.”
https://fordauthority.com/2023/05/ford-ecoboost-engines-should-get-5k-mile-oil-changes-video/
Give this article a quick read his video is posted on the page.