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i think more important than some of these economic data points is what's actually going on in the economy as admitted by some of these corporations while they're releasing their earnings this is particularly true when it comes to walmart which actually beat on both revenue and earnings let's see the experts try to dismiss that and claim that even three quarters of declining gdp still doesn't constitute a recession but even though it beat on earnings year over year earnings were still down it's just that they weren't down as much as investors had expected so this was being heralded as good news because it was a beat and walmart's share price went up as a result of the good news but i think looking beneath the headlines the news was not nearly as good when looking at what's actually going on with walmart customers first of all one of the comments that was made that walmart noticed an increase of more affluent customers shopping at its stores now what does that tell you well people are trading down people that didn't shop at walmart because they shopped at more expensive stores because they're getting squeezed by inflation because their rent is up or their mortgage is off their food costs are up their energy costs are up they don't have as much discretionary income so in order to get by they are trading down they prefer to shop at fancier stores that have maybe better merchandise more expensive merchandise but they can't afford that stuff anymore the only thing they can afford is walmart and so while that may be a good sign for walmart it's a bad sign for the overall economy that so many people that used to be wealthy enough not to have to shop at walmart have now seen their wealth diminish to the point where walmart is all they can afford also walmart mentioned that they're seeing an increase in the use of credit cards over debit cards again what is that telling you well it means that walmart customers don't have enough cash in their bank accounts to buy stuff using their debit cards so now they have to put stuff on their credit cards because they're buying stuff that they can't afford why well because prices are going up and they're going up by such a degree that customers can no longer afford to pay cash and so they're relying on credit as a lifeline we had a similar story with retail sales although the headline number came out a bit weaker than expected the rest of the report was stronger and again retail sales not adjusted for inflation clearly in real terms sales are falling people are buying less and paying more that's the story that's not strength that's weakness but the expectation was for a 0.1 rise in retail sales instead retail sales were flat so no rise at all and in fact the prior month's gain of 1 was revised down to 0.8 but we also got a better than expected report on industrial production for july and the prior month was reported as minus .2 and the expectation was for plus 0.3 well they revised the prior month up to zero and instead of being up 0.3 july came in at up 0.6 which was double what had been expected but was still within the range of expectations but nonetheless it was a beat now of course you got to take all this with a grain of salt because none of these numbers are adjusted for inflation so obviously when you have a lot of inflation industrial production at least the price of it is going to go up because the price of producing anything is going up so whether or not in real terms industrial production went up remains to be seen maybe we produce less it's just that the stuff that we did produce cost more now the same story with manufacturing output that was expected to rise by 0.2 instead it rose by 0.7 they even took the prior month's decline of minus 0.5 and made it just minus 0.4 so again stronger data there i mean the data isn't strong it just isn't as weak as expectations and compatible utilization went up to 80.3 the expectation was for rise to 80.1 although the prior month was actually revised down a bit from 80 even to 79.9 but again this was part of the data that maybe investors were bracing for worse than expected we got better than expected and so that was not the news that the markets wanted because again it's bad news is good news which means good news is bad news and so this was bad news that weighed on stocks but it also weighed on foreign currencies it weighed on gold it weighed on bonds x vehicles it was a bit of a different story they were expecting a minus .1 instead we got a plus 0.4 and if you x out gasoline and vehicles instead of being up 0.3 we were up 0.7 so again adjusted for inflation probably not a real rise but again the markets had been getting a lot of negative economic news and now all of a sudden the negative news isn't as bad we were beating expectations granted the bar had been lowered quite a bit but we were able to get over that bar and again that's not what the markets wanted to hear same thing with jobless claims you know we have been going up up up in weekly jobless claims now we've been moving back we had a revision to the prior week which was reported as 262 000 that was revised down to 252 000 the expectation for this week was 265 000 we came in at 250 so these are a bit softer we're still a lot higher than we were six months ago but we've softened a little bit so maybe that created a glimmer of hope that maybe the worst is behind us for the increase in claims in fact the four-week moving average moved down a bit it was 252 000 last week they revised that down to 249 500 and this most recent week it came out lower again at two hundred forty six thousand seven fifty now because i don't think this is a change of trend i think this is just a slight correction i think we're headed a lot higher in unemployment claims but for now the markets got a bit of a breather and that continued to fuel the narrative of a tougher fed but probably one of the more significant beats was the philadelphia fed manufacturing survey because a lot of people were bracing for a really bad number given the abysmal number we got in the empire state manufacturing number so the consensus for the philly fed was for a decline of 5 and that would have been a smaller decline than the prior months of minus 12.3 instead we didn't get a decline at all we got a rise of 6.2 now that's not a big number but it's a lot better than what the markets had been expected in fact the range of expectations went from minus 15 to plus two so plus 6.2 was more than triple the high end of the range and i think again that really helped drive this narrative that hey maybe the economy isn't as weak as we thought the fed is still resolute in its commitment to fight inflation and so maybe we were a bit premature in pricing in the pal pivot so we better start pricing some of that out and that's why you saw these big moves not just in the stock market but again even bigger moves in the foreign exchange markets the gold market the cryptocurrency market and the bond market but despite some of this better than expected economic news on the week if you look at the current prediction for q3 gdp out of the atlanta fed it's just for 1.6 percent now granted that would snap a two-quarter losing streak of negative gdp but we're still early in q3 in fact earlier in the month the atlanta fed was looking for 2.5 i think rise in q3 gdp so they've already ratcheted that down quite a bit and if you go back to a similar point in time in q2 the expectation at that time by the atlanta fed was for the gdp to be greater than plus 1.6 and it ended up as a negative 0.9 so i think it's still early in the quarter for the first time the prior month it was up 9.4 the consensus was july year over year would be up 9.8 instead the actual increase was 10.1 percent which represents a 40-year high now i think that really sends some shock waves throughout the markets to get a look at a major economy like the uk with double-digit inflation now i think in reality the us has double digit inflation and the digits are a lot higher in fact this is the fifth consecutive month where the leading economic indicators have been negative now that rarely happens in fact you have to go all the way back to the great recession of 2008-2009 to see that happen so something is happening right now with leading economic indicators that hasn't happened since the economy was in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression yet all the experts are trying to convince us that we're not even in a recession right now
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