EFIV News and Press, SPDR S&P 500 ESG From 01/19/23

Summary S&P 500 EPS growth for Q4 is set to come in at -3.9%, the lowest rate in over 2 years, but an improvement from last week. Despite headwinds, an early reading of corporate uncertainty seems to indicate that companies are actually the least anxious they’ve been in 5 yea...

Summary The US stock market has stabilized recently and trades moderately above its recent low. The current S&P 500 drawdown remains relatively steep. Finally, market valuation continues to pull back from its recent peak but has rebounded a bit lately, based on Shiller’s ...

Summary At 429 basis points, the spread of the major junk bond index to Treasuries is dangerously close to the “inside 400” level, which is where it spends most of its time in a booming economy. I would not call the U.S. economy “booming,” as there has been a...

Summary Falling wages reduce the odds of a 1970s style outcome. The biggest lesson for me was the sheer uncertainty of the future. We keep threatening to default on ourselves over a self-imposed constraint that doesn’t actually constrain anything. Here are some thin...

Summary Easing supply chain pressures are evident in supplier delivery times, which have been rising at a slower pace recently. Labor shortages did not ease much even as demand weakened. Weak demand conditions are likely to continue limiting companies' ability to sustain high wage g...

Summary The long-term leading indicators of growth and liquidity suggest corporate earnings and profit margins will continue to be pressured throughout 2023. However, as the lags from leading indicators tend to be long and variable, we may not see a material impact in earnings growth un...

Summary Financial conditions indicators are flashing risk embracement and loose conditions. Markets have been so speculative in recent years that squeezes have become commonplace. While powerful squeezes captivate the marketplace, potential accident catalysts make steady headway. ...

Summary Since October 13, 2022, the S&P 500 Index is up 11.80% on a price only basis. For the start of 2023, the S&P 500 Index is up 4.16% through January 13, 2023. As we noted in our recently published Winter Investor Letter, maybe the negativity around the market/economy is ov...

Summary The Federal Government ran a deficit of -$85B in December. While this was much smaller than the deficit posted in November, it marks one of the largest December deficits ever. Zooming out and looking over the history of the budget back to 1980 shows a complete picture. It shows ...

Summary The S&P 500 closed the week of January 13, 2023, above the 200-day moving average, for the first time since late November-early December ’22. The key benchmark is also testing the downward-sloping trendline that started in January ’22 with the all-time-high in ...