Mike Zigmont, author of the Zigmont Report, is a partner at New York-based Harvest Volatility Management, a hedge fund with over $10B AUM, offering volatility management solutions to its investor base worldwide. Mike has been publishing his daily newsletter (Monday-Friday) privately for the firm’s investors and his personal contacts in the investment business
since 2008, sending it daily shortly after the market close.
The opinions expressed below are my own
Crawling. US equities crawled a couple points higher today on light activity, capital flow was 91%. Economic news and data was unremarkable although the empire manufacturing data (30.2 vs 20.4 est & 24.4 prior) was impressive. New York manufacturing isn’t a bellwether for national manufacturing but it’s certainly a good data point. It’s the highest print since September 2014 and it’s in the neighborhood of past notable highs. The all-time high was 39.0 in April 2004 and the next best was 33.3 in October 2009.
Markets didn’t react to the8:30 AM
release so investors don’t think Empire manufacturing is telling us something we didn’t already suspect. Fair enough. The economic narrative continues to be that US economic growth is modest (2ish percent GDP isn’t quite exciting) but *it’s improving.
*So all (macroeconomic) systems appear to be go and that’s not going to shift the investing landscape in the near term.
Earnings this week should be more telling than the economic data. The beats will numerous. That’s known in advance. Will the beats inspire a new push in the tape?
That’s the unknown that we wait for. Netflix announcestonight
, that’ll get lips flapping. Earnings season, in earnest, is about to start.-Mike
