Tick Tock, Tick Tock

Maybe I am biased by my preference for soft data like ISM. Perhaps I care about ISM New Orders too much. You know what leads the New Orders? Housing. How is the housing market looking right now? We get that picture from the chart above. Sure, I have included more soft data on there from the National Association of Home Builders, but that index has

As you can see, new orders to inventory leads the ISM which in turn leads the SPX. The GDP lags badly & is somewhat disconnected. It has not predictive power but tells us good what happened a quarter ago when equity investors care what will happen going forward

I like to look at the data, in order to assess where it looks where we might be going. Then I look at the performance of the market, to see where investors think we are going. I then determine if I think there may be an opportunity in all of this. As with a stock, investors all should try to understand what is priced into any investment. That is my