The Real Big Stories of the Day (Besides Job Cuts Drop)

No, it is not Dr. Ben Carson saying Trump supporters have their minds  made up so stop trying to change them.

Nor is it that Hillary is coming down to the wire in trying to evade charges over illegal personal mail server use involving national security.

We also found it interesting that while Al Jazeera America is headed toward closing up shop in the US that they came up with this one: “AJAM’s David Shuster Exclusive: Hillary Clinton to be Interviewed by FBI Director Comey in Coming Days.”

Just when you thought hijacking the will of the voters was something only the Paul Ryan/Obama wing of the GOP did, come to find out this morning that the equally corporate and crooked Democrats are doing the same thing to Bernie: Bernie Sanders May Be Off DC Ballot After Democratic Party Filing.

The election might come down to “Security Risk for President” versus “Turncoat for President.”  (If voting really mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it, anyway.)  I wonder about webmors (web rumors) that there’s a Russian hacker who’s sitting on something like 80,000 Hilmails.  Maybe that came from this report.

And while we offer condolences to the families, none of the 14-dead in the India overpass collapse we drinking buds.

Still, that’s what passes for news.  It’s endlessly amusing to see how a single phrase gets used.  We’ve seen the words “Clinton” and “dangerous” popping up in our www.nostracodeus.com runs.  You can see it in a Google News search, for yourself.

Still, none of these are the B I G stories…

Job Picture Brighter Still

One that DOES actually matter to a whole bunch of people is the new Challenger, Gray, and Christmas Job Cut Report that’s just out:

“2016 March Job Cut Report: Monthly Cuts Fall, Quarterly Total Up 31%.

Job cuts declined for the second consecutive month in March, as US-based employers announced plans to trim payrolls by 48,207 during the month, according to new figures released Thursday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

The March total was 21.7 percent lower than the 61,599 job cuts in February. It was the lowest monthly total since December, when 23,622 were announced.

Despite last month’s decline, the March figure was 31.7 percent higher than the same month a year ago (36,594), making it the fourth consecutive year-over-year increase.

Through the first quarter of 2016, employers announced 184,920 job cuts, up 31.8 percent from the 140,241 cuts tracked the first three months of 2015. The first quarter saw 75.9 percent more job cuts than in the final quarter of 2015, when 105,079 job cuts were recorded.

Of the 184,920 job cuts announced in the first quarter, 50,053, or 27 percent, were directly attributed to falling oil prices. That is slightly (5.0 percent) higher than a year ago, when oil-related job cuts totaled 47,610. While there were fewer oil-related job cuts a year ago, they represented a larger portion of total job cuts, accounting for 34 percent of first-quarter layoff announcements.

“Job cuts have slowed since surging in the first two months of the year, but the pace is still well above that of 2015. And, it is not just the energy sector that is seeing heavier job cuts. Layoff announcement have increased significantly in the retail sector and computer sector, as well. While it may be too early to sound the alarm bells, the upward trend outside of the energy sector is somewhat worrisome,” said John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The reason this one matters so much is that while it’s true that most people can gauge the health of the economy pretty easily.  There are indicators all over the place.

If people are selling their “toy cars” that they drive only on weekends, that’s an indicator.  If you see musical instruments, home stereos, 3-year old computers…things like that increasing on Craig’s List, you can assume the economy is softening.

On the other hand, when new band formations are up, when toy car prices (like that ‘27 T-bucket with the blown and injected Chevy big block) go up, and when people are renting out still more storage units to stuff things into, those are sure signs of something or other.

Tomorrow we will get a look at the Federal numbers, but I don’t see much change coming for the simple reason that the stock market is way up and my long-standing “New highs before Summer” is looking a lot less stupid, here lately.

I don’t always get things right, but when I told George Noory in a Coast-to-Coast-AM interview that I expected the market to bottom in January and go up and hit new all time highs by Mary, that was about as close to exact as you’ll find.  And it was free.

The market did hit a low of 1,829.08 on February 11th.

Even though we will likely give up some of those gains this morning with a soft opening, we are still likely to finish the week around 2,060, maybe 2,040 on the low side.  But that would be fine for us (and our www.peoplenomics.com subscribers).

The reason?  I developed an investing tool a lot time ago called the Peoplenomics Oscillator.  The simple idea behind it was to keep me from making stupid mistakes in managing both dollars we’ve saved. 

As an oscillator, when it is above zero, it is OK to be long (bullish) expecting the market to work higher.  But when it is below zero, you’d be wise to flip into cash and maybe be short.

But there are some other “rules” from this tool that are spectacularly interesting.  One is that over time, it appears that market declines begin when our oscillator is in the +750 area.  Once it hits this level, you start to think about hiding under the bed with the dust bunnies.

On the other hand, when a very negative reading is setting up  (like the –1,304.88 we had the second week of February) even an idiot can gamble on going long the market and expecting the sky to open up and dump money on them.  (I play the part of the idiot.)

It’s the same way we knew that the week of March 6, 2009, we could load the boat long on the S&P and sit back and wait.  Our oscillator didn’t fall below zero until January 29 of 2010.

If I had followed my own advice, the oscillator would have entered the S&P at about 750 and would have exited around 1,073.  I don’t know how many investment systems scored that kind of gain  (43%) but it seems like a pretty good approach which is at least academically interesting.

And it all fits nicely with other trading techniques and NO, THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE.  But it IS a reminder to follow your heart and brains and come up with a set of personal rules to keep you from making foolish mistakes.

Once you have not rules set, you don’t have to make trades very often, at all.  Just (basically) at extremes of the oscillator when it has gone from a trading high or low and then crosses our zero axis.

No, it’s not sexy.  And no, it’s not exciting.  But it seems to work for us when used with a combination of trading channels, Elliott wave counts, MACD studies, and look-aheads from the headlines.

I highly recommend it. 

For me, personally, it is a fine cross between science and being a wild-eyed gambler.  And it’s updated twice a week on the Peoplenomics site, although (this is important) I ONLY make trading decisions on weekends because that is when some of the hot money comes off the table and you can make intelligent decisions.

We would like to see the oscillator under 650, or so, this week; well away from typical market “Peaks” where we have to start judging when to go short or into cash.  Futures are about flat anyway.

And that’s how we like things:  Simple.  No need to over-think Life if you don’t have to.  Just do a whole bunch of study on the front-end  – then develop and test rules – and then chill out and make simple decisions once you have a working recipe.

The roasts come out perfect, every time.

Speaking of Trading and Timing:  Watch China Bond Antics

I won’t bore you with the details of the Peoplenomics piece of yesterday (if you were serious about money, you’d be a subscriber).  But there was one very important part that you should think about.

That’s the notion of regional trading blocks.

The reason this is so on-point is that this as China investment bank defaults on ‘dim sum’ bond.

There is huge froth around Chinese bonds in the news flow right now.  And it is going regional (as we were hinting in the Wednesday report) Moody’s lowers outlook on these 4 Singapore banks.

Meanwhile, the rumors are flying hot and heavy:

Guosen Securities denies bond default.

Steelmaker Becomes Latest Chinese Company to Miss Bond Payment.

What also happens, when one kind of bond goes bad is you start hearing about “new” ideas.  A sample?  Sure…

China aiming for $46bn green bonds market in 2016.

Index Change For China Bonds Could Boost These ETFs,

And China Real Estate to issue up to 1.0 bln yuan bonds.

No, I haven’t built an oscillator for Asian markets.  Sometimes you just go with what you understand.  The parking lots of a couple of local businesses and a watchful eye on Wal-Mart parking lots is often as good as 500 various “gurus” ab9out half of whom turn out to be scamps, anyway, when all is said and done.