Authored by Bryce Coward via Knowledge Leaders Capital blog,
The Consumer Staples sector is often viewed as a safe haven; a sector that, because of its inherent cash flow stability, market participants can turn to as a place of refuge when things get shaky. Yet, persistent fundamental decline among North American Staples companies may well be throwing a wrench in these companies’ abilities to weather a broad market downturn.
One day after Broadcom surprised markets, and the US public, when the $100 billion Singapore company announced it would legally relocated to the US, Bloomberg and the WSJ report that Broadcom is considering a $100 billion deal for Qualcomm. The two are linked.
It is said that the markets will test a new Fed Chair early on and judging by the fact that financial conditions just tumbled to their 'easiest' in 24 years - despite four rate hikes - Jerome Powell will have his work cut out persuading the market that he is serious (before this bubble bursts).
The 'market' behaved as expected after the initial rate hike in Dec 2015 - financial conditions 'tightened' as The Fed 'tightened'. However, since then The Fed has entirely lost control...
The number of US oil rigs contonues to track the lagged price of WTI (lower). For the 4th week in the last 5 (and 10th of last 12), oil rigs declined (down 8 to 729).
This is the biggest absolute rig count drop since May 2016 to the lowest total rig count since May 2017.
35-year-old Jia Chen of Citibank probably has no idea where that title quote above came from. That's because she was roughly 4 years old when Poltergeist II hit theaters back in 1986...