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The S&P 500 was down 1.51% today after a mixed week. The index rose on Monday, began to drop on Tuesday and Wednesday, and flip-flopped on Thursday. It is down 2.08% since last Friday and is down 22.97% YTD.

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As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are now in a bear market and the longest bull market in history is over. Here’s a roundup of some informative charts, including the S&P 500, changes in the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P since 2000, and a few more that are relevant.

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What does the ratio of unemployment claims tell us about where we are in the business cycle and our current recession risk?

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This morning’s employment report for March showed a 701K decrease in total nonfarm payrolls, which was well below the Investing.com forecast of -100K.

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This morning’s release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 106.0, down 7.0 from the previous week. The WLI Growth indicator is now at -26.9, down 11.4 from last week and its lowest since the last recession.

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The Institute of Supply Management (ISM) has now released the March Non-Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), also known as the ISM Services PMI. The headline Composite Index is at percent 52.5, down 4.8 from 57.3 last month. Today’s number came in above the Investing.com forecast of 44.0 percent.

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The March US Services Purchasing Managers’ Index conducted by Markit came in at 39.8 percent, down 9.6 from the final February estimate of 49.4. The Investing.com consensus was for 49.4 percent.

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Was the March 2009 low the end of a secular bear market and the beginning of a secular bull? Are we in the beginning stages of another secular bear?

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With the Q4 GDP Third Estimate, we now have an updated look at the popular "Buffett Indicator" — the ratio of corporate equities to GDP. The current reading is 156.0%, up from 144.9% the previous quarter.

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Note: This update includes the Q4 GDP Third Estimate and the March close data.

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This morning’s seasonally adjusted 6.65M new claims, up 3.3M from the previous week’s revised figure, was worse than the Investing.com forecast of 3.5M.

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The U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, also known as the FT-900, is published monthly by the Bureau of Economic Analysis with data going back to 199 and details U.S. exports and imports of goods and services. Today’s headline number of -39.93B was lower than the Investing.com forecast of -40.0B.

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In this morning’s ADP employment report we got the March estimate of 27K nonfarm private employment jobs lost from ADP, a decrease over February’s revised 183K. The popular spin on this indicator is as a preview to the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Here’s the latest on the three largest cryptocurrencies by market share: bitcoin, Ether, and XRP.

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Quick take: At the end of March the inflation-adjusted S&P 500 index price was 86% above its long-term trend, down from 130% the previous month.
About the only certainty in the stock market is that, over the long haul, over performance turns into underperformance and vice versa. Is there a pattern to this movement? Let’s apply some simple regression analysis to the question.

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Here is the latest update of a popular market valuation method using the most recent Standard & Poor’s "as reported" earnings and earnings estimates and the index monthly average of daily closes for the past month.

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Quick take: Based on the March S&P 500 average of daily closes, the Crestmont P/E is 97% above its arithmetic mean and at the 96th percentile of this fourteen-plus-decade monthly metric.

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This morning the Institute for Supply Management published its monthly Manufacturing Report for March. The latest headline Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) was 49.1, a decrease of 1.0 percent from 50.1 the previous month. Today’s headline number was above the Investing.com forecast of 45.0 percent.

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The March US Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index conducted by Markit came in at 48.5, down 2.2 from the 50.7 final February figure. Markit’s Manufacturing PMI is a diffusion index: A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector; below 50 indicates contraction.

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Today we have the ADP March estimate of 27K nonfarm private employment jobs lost, a decrease over the ADP revised February figure of 179K.

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Valid until the market close on April 30, 2019.
The S&P 500 closed March with a monthly loss of 12.51% after a loss of 8.41% in February. All three S&P 500 MAs are signaling "cash" and four of five Ivy Portfolio ETFs — Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI), Vanguard REIT Index ETF (VNQ), Vanguard FTSE All-World ETF (VEU), and PowerShares DB Commodity Index (DBC) — are signaling "cash".

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"Travel on all roads and streets changed by +2.1% (+5.3 billion vehicle miles) for January 2020 as compared with January 2019. Travel for the month is estimated to be 253.7 billion vehicle miles." The 12-month moving average was up 0.16% month-over-month and up 0.9% year-over-year. If we factor in population growth, the 12-month MA of the civilian population-adjusted data (age 16-and-over) was up 0.42% month-over-month and up 0.5% year-over-year.

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With today’s release of the January S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, we learned that seasonally adjusted home prices for the benchmark 20-city index were up 0.31% month over month which is cut to -0.04% with inflation adjustment.

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The headline number of 120.0 was a decrease from the final reading of 132.6 for February. Today’s number was above the Investing.com consensus of 110.0.

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The latest Chicago Purchasing Manager’s Index, or the Chicago Business Barometer, fell to 47.8 in March from 49.0 in February, which is in contraction territory. Values above 50.0 indicate expanding manufacturing activity.

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The price of Regular and Premium are down twelve and ten cents each, respectively, from last week. According to GasBuddy.com, Hawaii has the highest average price for Regular at $3.35 and Oklahoma has the cheapest at $1.51. The WTIC end of day spot price closed at 20.09, down 14% from last week.

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Here is an advance preview of the monthly moving averages we track after the close of the last business day of the month.

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All eight indexes on our world watch list posted losses through March 30, 2020. The top performer is China’s Shanghai with a loss of 9.11%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is in second with a loss of 16.69% and in third is Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 with a loss of 18.04%. Coming in last is India’s BSE SENSEX with a loss of 27.7%.

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Five out of the twelve Federal Reserve Regional Districts currently publish monthly data on regional manufacturing: Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Richmond, and Philadelphia. The latest average of the five for March is -1.7, down from the previous month’s 5.8. It is well below its all-time high of 25.1, set in May 2004.

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This morning the Dallas Fed released its Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey (TMOS) for March. The latest general business activity index came in at -70.0, down 71.2 from 1.2 in February. All figures are seasonally adjusted.