Daily Commentary

Providing succinct, entertaining and savvy thinking on global capital markets. Our goal is to provide discerning investors the most essential information and commentary to stay in tune with what's happening in the markets, while providing unique perspectives on essential financial issues. And just as important, Fisher Investments MarketMinder aims to help investors discern between useful information and potentially misleading hype.

Get a weekly roundup of our market insights.

Sign up for our weekly e-mail newsletter.




US Consumer Sentiment Jumps to Highest Level Since July 2021

By Vince Golle, Bloomberg, 3/28/2024

MarketMinder’s View: Americans’ views on the economy are warming. It isn’t exactly a secret, but it is worth noting sentiment’s improvement amid the US avoiding recession, inflation’s cooling to prepandemic rates, higher interest rates’ limited impact on growth and stocks’ dancing around all-time highs. “The University of Michigan’s sentiment index climbed to 79.4 from 76.5 earlier in the month, reaching the highest since mid-2021, according to the final March reading issued Thursday. The 2.9-point gain from the preliminary reading was the biggest intramonth increase since August 2022.” Now, February’s 79.4 reading still sits below the survey’s long-term average of 85, so we wouldn’t read too far into one month’s spike. And there are a few things to consider here. One, sentiment doesn’t predict behavior—as mentioned, it reflects the recent past. Two, the U-Mich survey is just one of several fundamentally imperfect sentiment gauges we monitor, so we wouldn’t overrate what this one data point says about broader sentiment. As Wall Street legend Sir John Templeton once stated, “Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria.” Other signals (financial news, IPO activity, surveys elsewhere) suggest most folks still reside in the skepticism or early optimism stages, so we think this bull market has plenty of life left.


A Glut of Cheap Chinese Goods Is Flooding the World and Stoking Trade Tensions

By Hanna Ziady and Laura He, CNN, 3/28/2024

MarketMinder’s View: From electric vehicles to solar panels to jeans, Chinese exports prices are at their lowest level since 2009 tied to an oversupplied local market. In turn, cheap exports are flooding into other major economies—seemingly striking a nerve with major trade partners in the US and EU, who are supposedly weighing policy to protect their domestic manufacturers from being priced out. The upshot: Another tariff tiff, like those seen from 2017 – 2019 could loom. Perhaps. Chinese trade is a bipartisan target. But here is the thing: Those tariffs never amounted to a trade war that caused a bear market. And they never went away! They are still there! And that is on top of solar panel tariffs and more enacted even before them. The lesson here: Yes, actual trade wars can be bad for stocks, but tiffs between America and China are increasingly the norm. We aren’t saying investors should just ignore them, but scope matters a lot. And, when tariffs are only bilateral, they can be worked around, limiting the impact. See Vietnam with questions on that. Or Mexico. So don’t overrate the effect of any potential tariffs, which don’t look immediate today anyway.


Blow for Sunak as Revised Figures Confirm UK Went Into Recession Last Year

By Phillip Inman, The Guardian, 3/28/2024

MarketMinder’s View: The Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) latest data revision showed UK GDP contracted by -0.3% q/q in Q4, marking the country’s second-straight contractionary quarter, meeting one common definition of a recession. For our purposes, whether this is indeed bad politically for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is meaningless (please note that MarketMinder favors no politician nor any political party.) The key to us: This news is old hat for stocks. GDP data—especially revisions—are backward-looking and largely inconsequential to future growth. Stocks are forward-looking and likely pre-priced UK economic weakness back in 2022. Today, more timely monthly data (like UK composite purchasing managers’ indexes, which have been expansionary of late) suggest Britain could be in recovery as we type. That isn’t assured, but it wouldn’t be surprising, given rising British stocks seem to be pre-pricing better conditions.


US Consumer Sentiment Jumps to Highest Level Since July 2021

By Vince Golle, Bloomberg, 3/28/2024

MarketMinder’s View: Americans’ views on the economy are warming. It isn’t exactly a secret, but it is worth noting sentiment’s improvement amid the US avoiding recession, inflation’s cooling to prepandemic rates, higher interest rates’ limited impact on growth and stocks’ dancing around all-time highs. “The University of Michigan’s sentiment index climbed to 79.4 from 76.5 earlier in the month, reaching the highest since mid-2021, according to the final March reading issued Thursday. The 2.9-point gain from the preliminary reading was the biggest intramonth increase since August 2022.” Now, February’s 79.4 reading still sits below the survey’s long-term average of 85, so we wouldn’t read too far into one month’s spike. And there are a few things to consider here. One, sentiment doesn’t predict behavior—as mentioned, it reflects the recent past. Two, the U-Mich survey is just one of several fundamentally imperfect sentiment gauges we monitor, so we wouldn’t overrate what this one data point says about broader sentiment. As Wall Street legend Sir John Templeton once stated, “Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria.” Other signals (financial news, IPO activity, surveys elsewhere) suggest most folks still reside in the skepticism or early optimism stages, so we think this bull market has plenty of life left.


A Glut of Cheap Chinese Goods Is Flooding the World and Stoking Trade Tensions

By Hanna Ziady and Laura He, CNN, 3/28/2024

MarketMinder’s View: From electric vehicles to solar panels to jeans, Chinese exports prices are at their lowest level since 2009 tied to an oversupplied local market. In turn, cheap exports are flooding into other major economies—seemingly striking a nerve with major trade partners in the US and EU, who are supposedly weighing policy to protect their domestic manufacturers from being priced out. The upshot: Another tariff tiff, like those seen from 2017 – 2019 could loom. Perhaps. Chinese trade is a bipartisan target. But here is the thing: Those tariffs never amounted to a trade war that caused a bear market. And they never went away! They are still there! And that is on top of solar panel tariffs and more enacted even before them. The lesson here: Yes, actual trade wars can be bad for stocks, but tiffs between America and China are increasingly the norm. We aren’t saying investors should just ignore them, but scope matters a lot. And, when tariffs are only bilateral, they can be worked around, limiting the impact. See Vietnam with questions on that. Or Mexico. So don’t overrate the effect of any potential tariffs, which don’t look immediate today anyway.


Blow for Sunak as Revised Figures Confirm UK Went Into Recession Last Year

By Phillip Inman, The Guardian, 3/28/2024

MarketMinder’s View: The Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) latest data revision showed UK GDP contracted by -0.3% q/q in Q4, marking the country’s second-straight contractionary quarter, meeting one common definition of a recession. For our purposes, whether this is indeed bad politically for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is meaningless (please note that MarketMinder favors no politician nor any political party.) The key to us: This news is old hat for stocks. GDP data—especially revisions—are backward-looking and largely inconsequential to future growth. Stocks are forward-looking and likely pre-priced UK economic weakness back in 2022. Today, more timely monthly data (like UK composite purchasing managers’ indexes, which have been expansionary of late) suggest Britain could be in recovery as we type. That isn’t assured, but it wouldn’t be surprising, given rising British stocks seem to be pre-pricing better conditions.