Goldman's Global Leading Indicator (GLI) final print for February affirms the global economy has entered a contraction with accelerating negative growth. Just six months after "expansion", the Goldman Swirlogram has collapsed into "contraction" with monthly revisions notably ugly and 9 out of 10 components declining in February. Some have suggested, given US equity's strong February (buyback-driven [8]) performance, that the US economy will decouple from the world... or even drive it.. but that is 100% incorrect. US Macro data has fallen at its fastest pace in 3 years and is at its weakest level since July 2011 as 42 of 48 data items have missed since the start of February.
With 9 of 10 components negative in February, Goldman's Swirlogram has collapsed from expansion to contraction within just 6 months...
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First negative print since 2012 - indicating global industrial production is set to contract...
[10]
What is the GLI: The Global Leading Indicator (GLI) is a Goldman Sachs proprietary indicator that is meant to provide an early signal of
the global industrial cycle on a monthly basis. There is an Advanced reading for each month, released mid-month, followed by the Final reading, released on the first business day of the following month.
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But for those who look at US stocks and somehow believe America is an island economy capable of decoupling from the world... think again - it's all a lead-lag cycle and the global contraction blowback is boomeranging back to US data...
Today was ugly... nowhere worse than spending...
For the first time since Q1 2009 (i.e. post Lehman), we have just had back to back drops in consumer spending...
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The Bloomberg US Macro Surprise Index just dropped - after today's dismal data showing - to its lowest absolute level since July 2011. The last 3 months have seen it fall at the fastest pace sinceJuly 2012. Notice the lower peaks and lower troughs on each cycle since 2012...
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Note: this index tracks not just miss/beat but absolutepositive or negative data items - key to the cyclical aspect is the over-optimism and over-pessimism of economist's forecasts. The last 3 years (lower peaks and lower troughs) suggest economists are strongly biased to over-optimistic forecasts and normally this kind of drop woul dhave stopped but economists continue to look for hockey-sticks which, perhaps, in this case will be absent (and have been for a month).
But of course that doesn't matter...
[13]
A reminder of how this happened [8] (clue: non-economic buyers)...
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From the start of February...
MISS
- Personal Spending
- Construction Spending
- ISM New York
- Factory Orders
- Ward's Domestic Vehicle Sales
- ADP Employment
- Challenger Job Cuts
- Initial Jobless Claims
- Nonfarm Productivity
- Trade Balance
- Unemployment Rate
- Labor Market Conditions Index
- NFIB Small Business Optimism
- Wholesale Inventories
- Wholesale Sales
- IBD Economic Optimism
- Mortgage Apps
- Retail Sales
- Bloomberg Consumer Comfort
- Business Inventories
- UMich Consumer Sentiment
- Empire Manufacturing
- NAHB Homebuilder Confidence
- Housing Starts
- Building Permits
- PPI
- Industrial Production
- Capacity Utilization
- Manufacturing Production
- Dallas Fed
- Chicago Fed NAI
- Existing Home Sales
- Consumer Confidence
- Richmond Fed
- Personal Consumption
- ISM Milwaukee
- Chicago PMI
- Pending Home Sales
- Personal Income
- Personal Spending
- Construction Spending
- ISM Manufacturing
BEAT
- Markit Services PMI
- Nonfarm Payrolls
- JOLTS
- Case-Shiller Home Price
- Q4 GDP Revision (but notably lower)
- Markit Manufacturing PMI
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Of course, earnings expectations are not encouraging...
[15]
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But apart from that... everything is awesome.
