Context:
Daily Chartbook is a Substack channel who appears to have access to several research channels such as Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Daily Chartbook offers a paid service that does what it says on the tin, you get about 30 charts every day in an email, which are intended to support the investor in their decisions, especially if that investor is a professional.
This service was available for free, but transitioned to paid. However, you can still subscribe to DC Lite, for free, which sends you the top 5 most interesting charts of the day. It’s probably all the retail investor needs.
If the charts interest you, and you wish to subscribe:
https://www.dailychartbook.com/
Their charts are offered with minimal commentary, much of which comes from X, formerly Twitter.
I receive these charts as an email, and pass one or two along, here. I have no association with Daily Chartbook beyond being their subscriber. It’s a good way to keep this subLemmy active with appropriate content.
Problem for the researcher seeing these charts:
It would appear that unless you are subscribed to the research channel, that is, unless you are a direct subscriber with the expensive sources of Daily Chartbook, you will not be able to view these charts properly in order to investigate the methodology that creates the charts. These charts are not published publicly on the websites for their various sources.
I present these charts as education and entertainment, only. Please remember that I am showing a few charts, only, and that introduces bias. I make zero promises to do this daily or on a clear schedule, expect at least one post per week for now.
I intend to save any commentary on these charts for down here, where my opinion belongs. I’d like to keep all that attribution stuff in each post, though. So expect me to copy paste all that every time, to credit my sources but also acknowledge that these charts are kinda hearsay, since you can’t properly track down all the details to do an educated analysis of the chart because it’s hidden behind an expensive paywall.
If I had to sum up the last six months of looking at these charts every day, I would sum it up as holy shit, they might actually do it, this might be a soft landing. Bears are still expecting the recession to begin in Q1 2024, because of course they are. Bulls cautiously optimistic. The Fed is expected to start cutting rates next year, but I don’t think they’ve made any promises. If the chart I posted is making sense to me, they’ve done it, they’ve collectively dragged inflation back down to 2%, at least in the G10. AND the SP500 is kissing its all-time highs for Christmas. Still, smart money is generally taking it easy on risk, since the risk-free rate is so damn high it’s hard to justify a lot of equity buying.
My biggest lesson of the last six months was watching as Daily Chartbook silently offered me this curated data, and without any of their own editorial at all, was able to create quite a narrative just by selecting charts. Some days everything looked gloomy, some days, bull market, but most days the charts would contradict each other quite a lot, leaving an average impression that it’s gonna be okay, but don’t get all hypey. Imagine how easy it is to sell a bull market if you just ignore the gloomy charts, right? But nah, we don’t predict markets for a reason.
Consumer sentiment, stability, and buying power as shown by six months of these charts simply does not match up very well with the “everything hurts, and I’m dying” narrative that you hear so much on social media and the MSM. Whoever is doing okay is not talking because it gets them screamed at, so the data shows a resilient consumer who just isn’t drowning in credit card debt like you expect them to. That monster, of sharply rising consumer credit card debt, just refuses to show up properly. It’s been tilting upward the past few months but nothing frightening. People are buying Christmas stuff after all.
That’s why things are going okay. I think people have circled up, moved back home, gotten roommates, actually paid attention to all that “how to budget” advice online and they’ve done a bunch of other things. It’s made them very resilient, at least in the US. Even the low-income tax bracket is not struggling as hard as you expect, at least not in the data they aren’t. People are hanging in there, if only just, and that is what has been showing up in the data, consumer bankruptcy and other signs of trouble are not significant problems. That’s hard to square with what you get from people on socials, or what somebody says to a reporter. The anecdote always says disaster, but the data disagrees.
That’s kinda why I decided to do this. We don’t get a lot of decent data online, just talk and talk and a lot of emotions. A couple charts ain’t gonna hurt us.
Oh, and rents are finally starting to drop, according to the charts.
Corporate bankruptcy is ticking up, though. Rising interest rates are taking their toll on business. The SP500 has gotten all of its returns from 7 companies whose names you and your baby cousin both know, the FAAMGs, because AI, and otherwise most stocks in the SP500 have underperformed badly all year. “Narrow market breadth” they call it. It’s been a pretty picture hiding a lot of problems in 2023. So maybe the big bad recession will be soon at hand. Maybe the big dominoes just haven’t toppled yet.
Still, call the chart up there my Christmas present to the three people who might see it, at least you have a decent excuse to enjoy your Christmas dinner and feel like it’s gonna be okay, at least big-picture financially. The policies do appear to be working. Don’t tell that to the major cities, though.
I intend to keep it brief down here going forward, but for today, a quick recap of the impressions for the year, and then I’m just gonna mostly post the chart next time.