This Morning's Podcast: Trade Friction, Sanguine Stocks, Cutting Foreign Exposure (all in 6 minutes)

Chart (and quote) of the Day: Banks Well Positioned and Undervalued

Oppenheimer's Chris Kotowski shares our present view of the financial sector (our current top target weighting):

Quote of the Day: What 'Might' Happen If We Abandon the Trade War Notion?

While I'd never pretend that I could quantify to what percent a rally might ensue should we survive the current onslaught on global trade, in a note to (I presume) JP Morgan's clients today its top quantitative strategist, Marko Kolanovic, basically echoed the sentiment in our earlier blog posts, here and here:

What's Driving This Week's Rally?

The Dow's having a heck of a week! Closed over 300 points higher today alone. And while that makes some sense in that, amid a notably positive backdrop, the index was negative (-1.23%) on the year less than a week ago (5/31)  -- i.e., in theory it's only a matter of time before stock prices reflect the fundamental backdrop -- make no mistake, news that this year's primary headwind may be abating is the present  driver:

Economic Data Looks Very Good to Start June, However....

June is starting off very nicely in terms of economic data reported. Here's from our June 2018 trends file:

This Week's Message: The Folly In Forecasting

Staying with last month's theme, we'll begin this week's message by quoting from James Picerno's Nowcasting the Business Cycle:

This Morning's Podcast: Europe, Jobs, Tariffs, My Near-Term Skepticism, and General Conditions (all in 5 minutes!)