Russell Shor

Friday’s jobs data was stronger than expected. The non-farm employment change printed at 199K, which was ahead of the 184K forecast. This resulted in a lower unemployment rate of 3.7% (3.9%), whilst average hourly earnings came in at 0.4% m/m, double last month’s 0.2% m/m.

At its investor event yesterday, McDonald’s said that it is planning to open 10,000 new restaurants by 2027. This will bring the number of stores to 50,000 - it currently has more than 40,000 restaurants as per its latest quarterly filing.

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) is due to release its monetary policy statement on 19 December and there is some assumption that the central bank will end eight years of negative interest rates. Whilst this is speculative, the prospect of policy shift resulted in the yen jumping by its highest levels since January. Earlier today BoJ Governor Kazuo Ueda said that the BoJ has several options on which rates to…

Mastercard (MA.us) announced an increase in its dividend and another share buyback program. MA.us will raise its quarterly dividend to 66c (57c), which is a 16% increase. It will also repurchase $11bn of its own stock once its current $9bn plan is completed – there is $3.5bn still outstanding.

Spotify (SPOT.us) will lay off 17% of its workforce to cut costs. About 1,500 workers are affected, with this being the third round of layoffs for the year. This will considerably lower the spend on salaries and other employee associated costs.

In the first half of November, the GER30’s RSI broke above the green downsloping green trendline at 1. This suggested that positive momentum was expanding. This was confirmed by the index crossing above its black 30-week EMA and the EMA’s direction shifting upwards at 2. These are regarded as positive developments and the longer that the weekly RSI maintains above 50, the greater the underlying momentum support for the GER30.…

General Motors (GM.us) stock is looking set to outperform Ford (F.us). The relative strength chart, with GM.us as the numerator and F.us as the denominator, has bullish developments. The green 5-week EMA has crossed bullishly above the orange 10-week EMA (blue circle) and the RSI has crossed to the bullish side of 50 (blue rectangle).

Salesforce has been the best performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (US30) for 2023. Its relative strength began in mid-January (blue dashed vertical).

Gold has charted a higher trough followed by a higher peak on the significant weekly timeframe. This puts the precious metal into a defined uptrend on its weekly chart. XAUUSD is trading around $2,040, which is near six-month highs.

In a previous article we suggested that the US 10-year real rate was topping out and had charted a head and shoulders top. This pattern is still evident but is yet to breakdown. Rather the real yield has found support near the 2.09% (green horizontal arrow). In fact, the real yield has bounced slightly since hitting support and is now trading near 2.20%. FXCM’s USDOLLAR has continued to chart a…

The SPX monthly chart has charted a higher trough (HT) followed by a higher peak (HP). This denotes that the SPX500’s primary trend is an uptrend. With only 3 days left until the end of the month, the SPX 500 is up over 8.8% for November. This has resulted in a large blue monthly candle (candle 1). Candle 2 is a bullish reference candle i.e. it has the lowest low…