Retail Sales

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Monday, March 17. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Today’s Stocks On The Contrarian Radar©️ segment features MCW 0.00%↑ and starts at the bottom of this page.

State of Play

Stocks rallied on Friday, managing to reclaim some of the ground lost earlier in the week. As we eye our board of indicators for signs of direction at 0655, there is not an awful lot to go by:

• Stock index futures are pointing to a lower open. Small caps are leading the drop, with the Russell 2000 down 0.5%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq are down 0.3% each;

• Commodities are showing a few signs of life with WTI crude oil up 1% to trade around $67.50/barrel and copper up 0.3%;

• Cryptos are flat. Bitcoin is changing hands around $83,300;

• Bonds are seeing a few bids. The 10-year yield is down 2 basis points to 4.29% (yields move inversely to prices).

Today’s Known Events

Retail sales are the main event of the day. These are out before the open, at 0830.

Economists who were surveyed expect a 0.6% month-over-month increase, an improvement on the 0.9% decline recorded last month. Core retail sales, which exclude automobiles, are expected to rise 0.3% MoM after declining by 0.4% at the last reading.