Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Tuesday, Dec. 17. The Bottom Line segment of today’s podcast starts at (3:09), followed by Stocks on the Contrarian Radar©️ featuring automakers in particular F 0.00%↑ at (4:53) for listeners who want to skip ahead.
State of Play
Stocks advanced yesterday. Not the Dow Industrials, which have now finished lower for eight straight trading days. Fortunately we know better than to use the Dow as a gauge. Tech led the advance with the Nasdaq adding 1%+.
As we eye our board of indicators for signs of direction at 0640, things are mixed:
Cryptos continue to chug ahead, with Bitcoin up another 2% to trade right around $107,000 — a fresh all-time high;
Stock index futures are moving a bit lower with the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 which tracks small caps down 0.3% each. Other indexes are unchanged;
Commodities are moving lower. WTI crude oil is down 1.5% to trade below $70/barrel. Copper is down 1.2%;
Bonds are seeing a bit of selling. The 2-year yield is up 3 basis points to 4.28% whilst the 10-year is up 2bps to 4.42%.
Today’s Known Events
Retail sales are the main datapoint, out at 0830. Economists who were surveyed expect an increase of 0.6% month-over-month, an improvement over the 0.4% recorded last month. These are November’s numbers we’re getting today so little in the way of a holiday adjustment.
Industrial production is out at 0915. The expectation here is for an increase of 0.2% MoM after a 0.3% drop last month. That would improve the annualized figure to 0.1% from -0.3%.
No earnings of note today.
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