Dueling Economic Realities

We're disinclined to attribute single-day trends in the capital markets to anything in particular, but it does appear that today's (Monday's) reports out of India and Lowe's (LOW) have boosted traders' enthusiasm.

Here's a bit from the Lowe's announcement, quoting CEO Robert Niblock (emphasis added in bold):

"The economic pressures on consumers remain intense, and bigger ticket projects continue to be postponed as wary home improvement consumers watch the economic climate and housing market dynamics very closely," Niblock added. "But, as spring arrived, we saw relative strength in smaller, outdoor projects."

Niblock clearly understands the "intense" pressures on consumers, but traders might want to contrast middling concepts like "relative strength in smaller, outdoor projects" with this CNBC report on rising credit card defaults: "Credit Card Defaults Reach Record Highs in April." Here's a summary via Calculated Risk:

	April	March
Citigroup	10.21%	9.66%
Wells Fargo	10.03%	9.68%
JPMorgan Chase	8.07%	7.13%
Discover Financial Services	8.26%	7.39%

Hard to muster a lot of "second-derivative" enthusiasm off of numbers like these.

Comments

[The Aft Deck:]

Seems traders are so desperate for good news they ignore the fine print, Lowe is another cut cost reduced spending improvement, not better revenue

May 18 01:43 PM

[Ishortyou:]

I hope the banks do not lend money to the homebuilders to prevent them from flooding the market with new house starts to correct the oversupply in housing.

May 18 02:18 PM

[Fighting Yoda:]

“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” We have seen this over and over again.

May 18 09:53 PM