Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 11.9.18 (plus safe, respectful workplaces)

The time has again come for the weekly summation, the biggest positive being -- Hurray!  The Midterms are over!!  Divided government is good.  And, best of all, no more robocalls!  Other good news included stocks bouncing half way back from the October lows and 7 million new job openings.  The negatives are pretty much same old, same old.  Yes, rates are likely to go up again next month and, of course, the flip side of all those new job openings is that there are not enough qualified workers to fill them. 


The bonus this Veteran's Day weekend is a neat little graphic Barry Ritholtz posted today showing the perceptions Americans have about safe and respectful workplaces (i.e. sexual harassment) vis-a-vis the ability of men vs women to remedy the situation.  A whopping 98% of Americans feel it is either important or essential that top executives take responsibility for providing a safe and respectful work environment.  What is surprising is that, contrary to the headline that states that women are seen as better at this than men, what I see in the graph is that, though women executives, even from the point of view of men, do enjoy a modest edge over men in their ability to do this, what surprised me is that the majority of Americans see no difference between the sexes on this issue.  Women executives and men executives are more or less equally likely to be sexist and also equally likely to be champions against sexism.  This has certainly been my experience working in offices.  So my takeaway -- this is a complex problem that really defies simple solutions.  Hope everyone had a great Veteran's Day. 

Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 11.9.18

November 9, 2018 4:00pm by Barry Ritholtz

Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events

Positives:

1. Midterm elections are over! Markets liked the idea of divided government and gridlock, rallying strongly the day after. And even better, the robo calls, emails, commercials, and door bell rings will stop (until the Presidential Election in 2020).
2. November has seen stocks bounce off of recent lows, making up more than half of the October swoon;
3. There are 7 million+ job opening for the 3rd consecutive month;
4. October ISM services index fell 1.3 pts to 60.3 but that was 1.3 pts better than expected
5. Initial jobless claims at 214k was in line, little changed from last week.
6. QE is coming to an end in Japan; BoJ head Haruhiko Kuroda said this week, “Unlike in the past, Japan is no longer in a situation where a decisive, large scale policy is needed to overcome deflation.”

Negatives:

1. FOMC statement was uneventful in October, but rates are likely to be raised again in December.
2. There continues to be a shortage of qualified workers relative to openings, especially in technology and engineering professions.
3. Producer Price Index was hotter than expected with a 0.6% m/o/m; y/o/y gain is now 2.9
4. Mortgage rates rose again, up 4 bps w/o/w to 5.15% — the highest since April 2010;
5. Mortgage applications fell 4%; percentage of ARM volume rose to 7.8%Refi’s fell 2.5% w/o/w and are down 33% y/o/y.
6. Home Purchases fell 5% w/o/w and are flat y/o/y while the index level is at a two year low.

Sun 11-11-18 BigPic: 10 Sunday Reads - The Big Picture

Many Americans say women are better than men at creating safe, respectful workplaces