JHMC News and Press, John Hancock Multifactor Consumer Discretionary From 03/17/22

February and January are the worst months of the year for retailers, after the huge holiday season binge. Retail sales are sales of goods, both durable goods and nondurable goods. The number of used vehicles sold to retail customers in February dropped by 7% year-over-year. ...

The Census Bureau's Advance Retail Sales Report for February was released this morning. Headline sales came in at 0.31% month-over-month to two decimals and was below the Investing.com forecast of 0.40%. February headline, core, and control all saw increases, but were slightly bel...

Retail sales and food-services spending rose 0.3% in February following a 4.9% surge in January. However, today’s retail sales data are not adjusted for price changes. Non-store retailers led the decliners, down 3.7%, followed by health and personal care store sales, down 1.8%,...

We separate the XLY into retail and auto components and analyze their historical performance over the last century. Low dividend yields likely point to low returns until 2030. Unusually high long-term relative returns are typically followed by unusually low long-term relative retu...

US Consumer Discretionaries have fallen back to old support relative to Staples. A broader picture also shows a correction to a prior congestion zone for *global* Consumer Discretionary stocks. While a bearish downtrend remains intact, traders should monitor these intermarket tren...

The debit balances in margin accounts indicator weakened sharply, dropping from a positive trend to a negative trend. While nominal retail sales continue to grow, the real retail sales indicator in the AIER Leading Indicators Index remains in a downtrend. Demand for the manufactur...

This potential problem compounds if or when consumer sales soften simultaneously. While overall topline sales have stayed robust, there are incremental warning signs as to whether this will or even can continue much longer. the total revolving credit (seasonally-adjusted) was thou...

G5 central bank asset purchases are signaling that global PMIs are likely headed lower in the coming quarters. Inflation has completely destroyed real income growth. Speculative leverage has significantly reduced over the past couple of months. For further details see: G...

Emerging Markets are outperforming the rest of the world, due in large part to windfall profits in the commodities-exporting countries of South America and the Middle East. If you want to follow the money, this is a good place to start. Money has been flowing out of tech, consumer dis...

US economy shrugged off the effects of Omicron and should be relatively resilient to the headwinds caused by Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine by virtue of being an energy producer and having limited direct economic linkages. Higher interest rates are coming with 2% still...