Doug Short Advisor Perspectives

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Month-over-month nominal sales in September decreased by 0.3% (0.25% to two decimal points). Real Retail Sales, calculated with the seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index, decreased by 0.3% (0.27% to two decimal points).

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The Census Bureau's Advance Retail Sales Report for September was released this morning. Headline sales came in at -0.25% month-over-month to one decimal and was almost at the Investing.com forecast of 0.3%. Core sales (ex Autos) came in at -0.08% MoM (to two decimals).

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Here's the latest on the three largest cryptocurrencies by market share: bitcoin, Ether, and Ripple.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Housing Market Index (HMI) is a gauge of builder opinion on the relative level of current and future single-family home sales. It is a diffusion index, which means that a reading above 50 indicates a favorable outlook on home sales; below 50 indicates a negative outlook. The latest reading of 71 is up 31 from last month.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] This morning we got the latest Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The diffusion index for General Business Conditions at 4.0 was an increase of 2.0 from the previous month's 2.0. The Investing.com forecast was for a reading of 1.0.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The price of Regular and Premium are down two and one cent each, respectively, from last week. According to GasBuddy.com, California has the highest average price for Regular at $4.16 and Louisiana has the cheapest at $2.22. The WTIC end of day spot price closed at 52.81, up 0.1% from this time last week and a 9% increase since the beginning of the year.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] All eight indexes on our world watch list posted gains through October 14, 2019. The top performer is China's Shanghai SSE with a gain of 22.01% and in second is France's CAC 40 with a gain of 20.34%. In third is our own S&P 500 with a gain of 18.17%. Coming in last is Hong Kong's Hang Seng with a gain of 5.54%.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Let's take a closer look at recent activity in US Treasuries. The yield on the 10-year note ended October 11, 2019, at 1.76% while the 2-year note ended at 1.63% and the 30-year at 2.22%.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The S&P rose this week, ending Friday up 1.1% from Thursday and up 0.62% from last Friday. The index is up 18.49% YTD.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U) released yesterday morning puts the year-over-year inflation rate at 1.71%. It is below the 3.76% average since the end of the Second World War and above its 10-year moving average, now at 1.76%.