Morning Report

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change	Percent
S&P Futures	1303.7	3.4	0.26%
Eurostoxx Index	2145.2	7.5	0.35%
Oil (WTI)	82.29	-0.4	-0.50%
LIBOR	0.468	0.000	0.00%
US Dollar Index (DXY)	82.53	0.013	0.02%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield	1.61%	0.02%
RPX Composite Real Estate Index	178.9	0.2

Markets are a touch higher this morning after yesterday's sell-off. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans (who Jim Bianco called an uber-dove) said he supports more stimulus. The 10-year yield is back up to 1.61% and MBS are down about 1/4 of a point.

The National Federation of Independent Business Optimism Index ticked down in May. It came in at 94.4, vs 94.5 in the previous month, which is a historically low level. 51% of owners hired or tried to hire in the last three months and nearly 3/4 of those reported few or no qualified applicants for positions. The report has a pretty scathing indictment of Washington, with 22% of the respondents indicating taxes as the single most important problem. 20% reported poor sales, and 19% reported government red tape.

Excerpt from the report: "The Index did not go down by much, that’s the good news. The May reading is still at recession levels from an historical perspective, consistent with very anemic Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment growth. The calculus of spending decisions requires an estimate of future sales, tax rates, interest rates and credit availability, labor costs, health care costs, regulatory compliance costs, all of which are very uncertain, meaning that owners cannot make reliable estimates of what will happen to these
factors. Most of this uncertainty is coming out of Washington, D.C. Owners can’t attach probabilities to outcomes or even decide which outcomes to consider.

The amount of political manipulation and evasion to guide the spending of billions of taxpayer dollars is disturbing to owners. Sixty (60) percent of those surveyed said now is a bad time to expand their businesses; one-in four of those owners cited political uncertainty as the main reason, second only to concerns about a weak economy. Investing in jobs or plant and equipment will remain at “maintenance” level until this is resolved."

I would be surprised if this doesn't become campaign fodder.

A study from the Federal Reserve regarding changes in US family finances has been getting a lot of discussion - the median net worth of families has dropped nearly 40% from 2007 to 2010, putting them back where they were in 1992. Most of this is housing-driven, though stocks, student loans, and a drop in incomes are playing a part too.  A generation's worth of wealth creation has been destroyed in 3 years. Of course much of that wealth was illusory, but it does speak to why confidence has been so lousy - the reverse wealth effect. Hopefully housing is in fact bottoming, which will reverse this effect.

The WSJ addresses in interesting question:  if the shadow inventory is so high, why is the inventory of homes actually for sale at normal levels?  It turns out (unsurprisingly) that negative equity is the reason, but also the influx of professional investors scooping up inventory in the hardest-hit areas.  It also explains why prices are rising the most at the bottom end of the market - they have the most negative equity, so supply is the most constrained.

Chart:  NFIB Small Business Optimism Index: