Rover’s Weekly Market Brief — 2/8/2019

New Charting Basics Video

We have added a new video that gives an introductory tour of the Stock Rover Charting facility. The video is a shade under 7 minutes and covers the basic features of manipulating charts. To watch the video, click here ^[7].

Economy

Factory orders ^[8] fell by -0.6% in November for the second consecutive drop in new orders after a -2.1% decline in October. Much of November’s drop was the result of a -1.9% fall for “nondurable goods industries” new orders, a newly introduced data category that includes petroleum products, and which was strongly affected by a $20 decline in oil prices. However, the drop in oil was offset by +31.2% and +72.6% increases in civilian and military aircraft, respectively, which pulled overall durable goods orders up to +0.7%. Excluding military and aircraft orders, core capital goods orders fell -0.6% compared to a +0.5% increase in October.

Due to the government shutdown, only manufacturing data was available in the 2018 Q4 Productivity and Costs ^[9] report, although revisions were available for Q3, with nonfarm business productivity revised down to +2.2% (-0.1%), manufacturing productivity revised up to +1.1% (+0.1%), and nonfinancial corporate productivity revised to +6.1% (+0.6%), for the largest increase since a +6.7% reading in 2012 Q4. Manufacturing output for Q4 was up +2.3% with an increase of +1.0% in hours worked, bringing labor productivity up +1.3%. Durable manufacturing productivity (+2.6%) outpaced nondurable manufacturing (+1.2%), with durable output growing +5.7% compared to a -1.2% drop for nondurable, and durable manufacturing hours worked growing +3.0% while hours worked for nondurable manufacturing declined -2.4%.

The trade deficit ^[10] narrowed by $6.4 billion in November to $49.3 billion, largely because imports fell by $7.7 billion, with an accompanying drop of -$1.3 billion in exports. Exports increased for capital goods (+1.4 billion), but this was not enough to make up for drops in industrial supplies exports (-$1.4 billion) and consumer goods exports (-$0.9 billion). Imports dropped by -$4.3 billion for consumer goods, which included a -$2.3 billion drop for cell phones and household goods, and a -$3.4 billion drop for industrial supplies, which included a -$1.4 billion fall in petroleum products. The trade deficit with China narrowed by -$2.8 billion to $35.4 billion, with imports decreasing by -$2.9 billion and exports decreasing by -$0.1 billion.

Upcoming Economic Reports:

Thursday February 14 – Retail Sales

Friday February 15 – Industrial Production

Earnings Calendar:

 

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Loews (L) [11]	S&W Seed (SANW) [12]	Cisco Systems (CSCO) [13]	Coca-Cola (KO) [14]	PepsiCo (PEP) [15]
Vornado Trust Realty (VNO) [16]	Occidental Petroleum (OXY) [17]	American International Gr (AIG) [18]	NVIDIA (NVDA) [19]	Kraft Heinz (KHC) [20]