The miss in the Kansas City Fed data makes it four out of four today for weaker-than-expected macro prints and of course, equity markets are pushing to new highs. Under the surface of each of these reports the data is even more compellingly ugly - and we have seen this pattern of mass delusion before. As the chart below shows (confirming many of our macro-reality to market-unreality divergences) the crash in Kansas City Fed employment data relative to the S&P 500 is as divergent as ever. The last time this happened, things didn't work out so well.
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Charts: Bloomberg