Data Before D-Day

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Wednesday is supposed to be D-Day for the banking mafia. Will the Europeans have it all worked out by then – and by worked out I mean sufficiently screwing the taxpayers – or will they continue bickering? Whatever the result is Wednesday, I’ll bet they agreed on more meetings.

 

In the mean time, let’s take a look at some of today’s data.

 

The S&P Case-Shiller HPI wasn’t very good. Home prices are not rising. Bloomberg, of course, tries to put a good spin on it “Home prices, at best, may be stabilizing according to Case-Shiller data that show no change in the adjusted composite-20 index for August. The reading ends three prior months of 0.1 percent declines (July revised downward from no change). The unadjusted reading, at a very weak plus 0.2 percent vs plus 0.9 percent and plus 1.1 percent in the two prior months, points to price contraction in August given that monthly readings in this report are three-month averages. Nevertheless, the unadjusted year-on-year pace of minus 3.8 percent is the best reading since February in what hints at a flattening in the slope of price contraction.”

 

The FHFA House Price Index was much worse. The consensus was for a reading of +0.3% but it was -0.1%. Moreover, last month’s reading of +0.8% was brought back to reality with a revised +0.1%.

 

Finally, we have the consumer confidence data that was just awful – the WORST since March 2009. Bloomberg’s take: The consumer's assessment of current conditions is at its lowest point since December while consumer expectations are at their lowest point since the recession. The consumer confidence index fell 6.6 points in October to 39.8 with the current conditions component down a sharp seven points to 26.3 and the expectations component down 6.4 points to 48.7.

 

Stand-out weakness appears in the current assessment of business conditions where fewer, 11.0 percent, describe conditions as good and more, 43.7 percent, describe conditions as bad. And what is not a good sign for holiday spending, stand-out weakness also appears in income expectations where fewer, 10.3 percent, see their income rising and more, 19.2%, see their income decreasing. This inversion in income with pessimists on top is very rare for this series.

 

But data doesn’t matter when there “may” be a meeting in Europe…sometime…soon, I think?

 

Pass the Hopium please.

 

Trade well and follow the trend, not the so-called “experts.”

 

Larry Levin

Founder & President of TradingAdvantage.