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Two of eight indexes on our world watch list have posted gains through Monday, November 12, 2018. The top performer this year is India’s BSE SENSEX with a gain of 2.96%. In second is our own S&P 500 with a gain of 1.97%. In third is Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 with a loss of 2.17%. Coming in last is Shanghai’s SSE with a loss of 20.46%.

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The team at HSH.com, features a periodic update entitled "The Salary You Must Earn to Buy a Home in the 50 Largest Metro Areas". The key question is: "How much salary do you need to earn in order to afford the principal and interest payments on a median-priced home in your metro area?"

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The S&P 500 climbed through the middle of the week, only to come down a bit on Friday. The index closed up 2.13% from last Friday, but down 0.92% from yesterday (Thursday). It is up 1% YTD.

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The University of Michigan Preliminary Consumer Sentiment for November came in at 98.3, down 0.3 from the October Final reading. Investing.com had forecast 98.0.

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This morning’s release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 145.0, down from the previous week’s 146.1. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at 0.19%, down from last week. The WLI Growth indicator is now at -2.64, also down from the previous week.

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The Weekly Leading Economic Index (WLEI) uses fifty different time series from these categories: Corporate Bond Composite, Treasury Bond Composite, Stock Market Composite, Labor Market Composite, Credit Market Composite.

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Today’s release of the October Producer Price Index (PPI) for Final Demand came in at 0.6% month-over-month seasonally adjusted, up from last month’s 0.2%. It is at 2.9% year-over-year, up from 2.6% last month, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. Core Final Demand (less food and energy) came in at 0.5% MoM, up from 0.2% the previous month and is up 2.6% YoY NSA. Investing.com MoM consensus forecasts were for 0.2% headline and 0.2% core.

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The median household is the statistical center of the Middle Class. In terms of income, this class has not gained much in recent decades. Let’s take a closer look at a troubling aspect of the Census Bureau’s latest annual household income data, issued in September. In this update, we’ll focus on the growing gap between the median (middle) and mean (average) household incomes across the complete time frame of the Census Bureau’s annual reporting, which began in 1967, to the release of the annual data for 2017.

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The Philly Fed’s Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti Business Conditions Index (hereafter the ADS index) is a fascinating but relatively little known real-time indicator of business conditions for the U.S. economy, not just the Third Federal Reserve District, which covers eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware. Thus it is comparable to the better-known Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index.

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This morning’s seasonally adjusted 214K new claims, down 1K from the previous week’s revised figure, was at the Investing.com forecast of 214K.

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

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The latest price of home heating oil nationwide is $3.35, down two cents from last week and up 6 cents since the beginning of the season.

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We’ve updated our monthly workforce analysis to include Friday’s Employment Report for October. The unemployment rate remained at 3.7%, and the number of new nonfarm jobs (a relatively volatile number subject to extensive revisions) came in at 250K.

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Note: This commentary has been updated with the latest numbers from Friday’s Employment Report. This is not the scenario that would have been envisioned a generation ago for the "Golden Years" of retirement. Consider: Today nearly one in three of the 65-69 cohort and about one in five of the 70-74 cohort are in the labor force.

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The 20th century Baby Boom was one of the most powerful demographic events in the history of the United States. We’ve created a series of charts to show seven age cohorts of the employed population from 1948 to the present. What we see is essentially the "Boomer Bulge" in employment across time. Those born between 1946 and 1964 continue to grow the employment of the two oldest cohorts. It will be interesting to see how long those two trends continue.

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The last couple of years have been remarkable ones for yields. The 10-year note hit its historic closing low of 1.37% in July of 2016 and then rose 177 BPs to 3.14% as of the October 26th close.

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The moving average for the per-capita Light Vehicle Sales series peaked in 1986. Thirty-plus years later, it is now down 29.0% from that 1986 peak.

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The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is a simple computation: You take the Civilian Labor Force (people age 16 and over employed or seeking employment) and divide it by the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (those 16 and over not in the military and or committed to an institution). The result is the participation rate expressed as a percent.

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This update is in response to a standing request for real (inflation-adjusted) charts of the S&P 500, Dow 30, and Nasdaq Composite.

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What are the long-term trends for multiple jobholders in the US? The Bureau of Labor Statistics has two decades of historical data to enlighten us on that topic, courtesy of Table A-16 in the monthly Current Population Survey. At present, multiple jobholders account for just 5.2 percent of civilian employment. The survey captures data for four subcategories of the multi-job workforce, the current relative sizes of which we’ve illustrated in a pie chart.

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The latest JOLTS report (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary), with data through September, is now available. The time frame is quite limited compared to the main BLS data series in the monthly employment report, many of which go back to 1948, and the enormously popular Nonfarm Employment (PAYEMS) series goes back to 1939, while the BLS began tracking JOLTS in December 2000.

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Let’s take a closer look at recent activity in US Treasuries. The yield on the 10-year note ended October at 3.14% and the 30-year bond closed at 3.39%.

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It’s time again for our weekly gasoline update based on data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The price of Regular and Premium are down six and five cents each, respectively, from last week. According to GasBuddy.com, Hawaii has the highest average price for Regular at $3.85 and Oklahoma has the cheapest at $2.39. The WTIC end of day spot price closed at 63.10, a 5.9% decrease from this time last week and its fifth in a row.

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Two of eight indexes on our world watch list have posted gains through Monday, November 5, 2018. The top performer this year is India’s BSE SENSEX with a gain of 3.37%. In second is our own S&P 500 with a gain of 2.42%. In third is Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 with a loss of 3.80%. Coming in last is Shanghai’s SSE with a loss of 19.40%.

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Here’s an interesting set of charts that will especially resonate with those of us who follow economic and market cycles. Imagine that five years ago you invested $10,000 in the S&P 500. How much would it be worth today, with dividends reinvested but adjusted for inflation? The purchasing power of your investment has increased to $16,903 for an annualized real return of 10.54%.

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The S&P 500 index is arguably the most well-known worldwide. It is based on the market cap of the 500 largest companies in the U.S. The first-ever ETF, introduced in 1989, hoped to mimic the index, but was short-lived due to a lawsuit. Several S&P 500 ETFs have been brought to market since, and we show their performance, as well as the tracking error relative to the S&P 500 Total Return Index (which assumes reinvestment of dividends).

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Let’s take a close look at Friday’s employment report numbers on Full and Part-Time Employment. Buried near the bottom of Table A-9 of the government’s Employment Situation Summary are the numbers for Full- and Part-Time Workers, with 35-or-more hours as the arbitrary divide between the two categories. The source is the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) of households. The focus is on total hours worked regardless of whether the hours are from a single or multiple jobs.

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The Department of Labor has monthly data on employment by industry categories reaching back to 1939. At the highest level, all jobs are categorized in either Service-Providing Industries or Goods Producing Industries. The adjacent chart illustrates the ratio of the two since 1939. The latest monthly employment report showed a gain of 250K nonfarm payrolls, which consists of a gain of 183K service-providing jobs and a gain of 67K goods-producing jobs.

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The Institute of Supply Management (ISM) has now released the October Non-Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), also known as the ISM Services PMI. The headline Composite Index is at 60.3 percent, down 1.3 from 61.6 last month. Today’s number came in above the Investing.com forecast of 59.3 percent.

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The October US Services Purchasing Managers’ Index conducted by Markit came in at 54.8 percent, up 1.3 from the final September estimate of 53.54.8. The Investing.com consensus was for 54.7 percent. Markit’s Services PMI is a diffusion index: A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector; below 50 indicates contraction.