The first thing you should know about the week ahead is that the list of scheduled speaking engagements for Fed officials is long. Farcically long. So long, in fact, that if you didn’t know any better, you could mistake it for satire.
In the days ahead, traders will hear from, in order, Bostic, Bostic again, Barr, Waller, Jefferson, Mester, Bostic a third time (in a single day), Barkin, Waller again, Williams, Bostic (a fourth time in two days), Barr again, Mester again, Collins, Goolsbee, Bostic (a fifth time in four days) and, finally, Waller for the third time in a week.
I can’t emphasize this enough: That’s comical. And ridiculous. Comically ridiculous. Ridiculously comical. And it’s made even more so by the release of the (stale) May FOMC minutes on Wednesday. We’re long past over-communicating by now. I don’t know what this is, but I know what it isn’t: Helpful.
Of course, not all of those public appearances will yield market-moving information, but in an era when algos trade headlines first and ask questions later (or never), it’s fair to suggest that delivering a fire hose of soundbites may be conducive to confusion. Jerome Powell committed himself to over-communication from day one in the big seat, ostensibly in the interest of transparency and keeping the public apprised. But if you ask me, we reached the point of diminishing returns on that years ago.
In any case, the US docket’s otherwise pretty sparse. In fact, there are no notable releases on Monday, nor Tuesday. Wednesday brings existing home sales, which probably rose 0.5% in April, according to people who’ve proven time and again that the prediction business is a mug’s game. Last week’s housing updates saw builder sentiment retreat back below a key threshold separating net optimism from pessimism, while new construction data disappointed. New home sale figures are due Thursday. Economists expect a decline.
Flash reads on S&P Global’s PMIs will garner some attention, particularly in the context of a slowdown narrative that’s getting some traction. Of course, the prints only matter in the US until the ISM updates are released two weeks later, but as appetizers go, the S&P Global releases do carry some weight. Consensus expects 50.1 from the manufacturing headline and 51.1 on the services side.
It’s worth noting that the national mood in the US, as measured by various economic sentiment gauges, including the most prominent (shown above), never enjoyed the “V-shaped” recovery observed in the real economy.
Speaking of sentiment, the final read on the University of Michigan index for May is due Friday. Recall that the preliminary release for this month was quite poor.
Overseas, inflation data out of the UK’s likely to show price growth receded somewhere very close to the BoE’s target in April. It’ll probably drift up over the balance of the year, though. Hopefully not by too much.
Andrew Bailey will have one more release (i.e., in addition to this week’s) to factor in before next month’s MPC meeting. At the last policy gathering, he left the door wide open to a cut in June.
Also this week, the ECB will get key wage data which I’d describe as “pivotal” if the market hadn’t already convinced itself of a cut in June either way. Japan publishes inflation data on Friday.
Global equities come into the week having gained in 11 of the past 12 sessions. MSCI’s index is up nearly 7% over the course of a four-week win streak which pushed the gauge to a record high. Nvidia reports on Wednesday.
Dr. H, one could say you have buried the lede here. The cacophony of Fed speak and the stale minutes will be ignored by late Wednesday afternoon with the S&P 1s earnings report.
Does the amount of insider selling at NVDA portend anything for the future stock price?
Ten directors, the Principal Accounting Officer, the Executive VP for Operations, the EVP & Chief Financial Officer, and the President and CEO have all sold shares in the past year. No insiders seem to be buying.
Coincidence? Maybe all these folks decided to have pools put in?
Do the watchdogs for insider trading have enough power to prevent these people from acting in their own self interest?
Not all insider sales are nefarious. Some are pre-planned / programmatic. And more broadly, I have an issue with this notion (not necessarily your notion, but just in general) that company executives shouldn’t ever sell shares. If you work to increase the value of a company, and your work pays off, you shouldn’t be castigated as some kind of villain when you cash in. What’s the point in working so damn hard if you can’t ever take some chips off the table? One argument for share-based compensation is to align incentives. If I’m going to be a bad guy whenever I sell, maybe I’ll just say “You know what? I don’t want shares anymore. I want an all-cash comp package instead. If the stock crashes, it crashes. I get my money either way.”
Also: Everybody, all day, every day, acts in their own self interest. If you delude yourself into thinking otherwise, life’s either going to be a long series of disappointments, or decades of self-deception to avoid coming to terms with the reality that self interest and self preservation outweigh all other concerns at the end of the day. The only exception to that rule is your dog. Your spouse, kids, friends, grandparents, employers, employees — everybody besides your dog — will generally rob you blind (figuratively or literally) if it serves their interests and those interests are pressing enough. There’s one more exception besides your dog: Stupid people. Stupid people put other people’s interests ahead of their own sometimes, and that usually ends up leaving them broke or worse, a situation they excuse by reference to karma and being a good person, which would be great if normative language wasn’t gibberish (it is) and if karma was real (it’s not) and if there was an afterlife where people were rewarded for acting altruistically (there isn’t).
All of that to say it wouldn’t bother me a single bit if Nvidia insiders were selling hand over fist. In fact, I’d be more worried if they weren’t. I’m not sure I want delirious GameStop “diamond hands” in the C-Suite at the most important company in the world.
(Best case for dogs ever.)
Makes you wonder why they call underperformers “dogs.”