Remember back in September when Fox News super dunce Stuart Varney said that all predictions of recession are politically biased? Well around the same time as he made that assertion, Duke University surveyed 225 CFOs on the state of the U.S. economy. The majority of these CFOs see a recession within one year. Fortunately, they are ALL Democrats, so we can ignore them.
"What do they know?"
"Executives don’t want to be caught unprepared for the next recession like they were in the global financial crisis. There are plenty of warning signs and now is the time to be prudent. Who wants to put their firm at risk by increasing borrowing to fund a major new project when a recession could be on the horizon? It is no surprise that capital expenditures have dried up"
Today, adding further fuel to the fire, Goldman Sachs just indicated that stock buybacks are "plummeting". A clear indication that corporate cash flow is now declining. Goldman cited imploding CFO confidence level as a key reason why overall corporate spending is now declining. In other words, there is now a feedback loop between the plummeting confidence of "Democrat" CFOs and the economy.
Repeat after me: "This isn't happening"
"The slowdown in buybacks is part of a larger trend of spending cuts, Goldman found, as trade uncertainty and stalling global growth weigh on the market...It anticipates cash spending for the entire year will decline by 6%, making it the sharpest yearly decline since 2009."
As we see below, new highs are surging as recession stocks go into blow-off mode.
The sector(s) making new highs are very narrow right now, as Utilities and Staples have rolled over. Dominating the list are income producing Real Estate Investment Trusts and discount retailers:
Here we see REITs are a tad overbought - having had no selloffs this entire year. Now exhibiting human history's largest rising wedge:
Within the discount retailers, Dollar Tree just took out its 2018 high:
Ross Stores is coming off the boil
TJ Maxx - nothing to see here
Not in either of the aforementioned sectors, I would be remiss in not pointing out that Apple is once again the most overvalued company on the planet
What every person needs in a recession is a more expensive dumbphone
"It's called the Super Dumbphone"
