FSTA News and Press, Fidelity MSCI COnsumer Staples Index From 09/10/21

Spending generally increases with income, but not in the naïve lockstep fashion described in economics textbooks. With less debt, people will feel confident spending more. When unemployment, inflation and interest rates are all low, consumers are pretty happy. For furth...

A dashboard with metrics in consumer non-cyclical industries. Value and quality scores, and their evolution since last month. Fast facts on FSTA. A list of cheap stocks. For further details see: FSTA: Consumer Staples Dashboard For September

Main Street businesses are those that operate a physical storefront up and down the main streets and side streets of cities and towns all over the world. More than 60 percent of the Main Street businesses that also sell online and use third-party aggregators say that their overall sal...

The 10-year Treasury yield declined a bit during the Afghanistan crisis, so all eyes are now on the Fed to see how new realities will impact monetary policy. The Fed released its latest FOMC minutes, which revealed a disagreement within the FOMC about when QE tapering will begin. On T...

Could the Fed begin paring back asset purchases soon? U.S. July retail sales tick lower. Are consumers still in good shape? 3 key risks to China’s economic outlook. For further details see: Almost Time To Taper? What The Latest Fed Meeting Minutes Reveal

The Wall Street Journal announced that Amazon plans to open “Large Retail Locations Akin to Department Stores”. This news comes at the heels of the latest e-commerce report from the Census Bureau posting record sales of $225 billion in the second quarter of 2021. Dep...

Friday, it was news that US consumer confidence fell 13% from July into August to 70.2 (vs 81.3 expected), the lowest since 2011. Yesterday, it was news that US retail sales for July - purchases at stores, restaurants and online - fell 1.1% compared with June. Today, we learn that...

There is one critical problem for supposing the ever-so-slight calm in inflation mean anything. The Fed’s own argument of the “base effect” now works against it. One of the Fed’s biggest excuses for claiming inflation would be transitory was that most of it...

The chip problem is holding back what is already a monstrously robust (if artificial) sales environment in the auto sector. While the entire retail sector grapples with supply and supply chain issues, outside the automotive segment the rest of it has been far more successful mitigatin...

My reading of the current environment is relatively clear; both the longer term and shorter-term leading growth indicators are pointing toward the heightened possibility of slowing cyclical growth. As a result, these downward trends suggest investors ought to be rotating out of the re...