Notes From All Over -- Part 2 -- September 19, 2021

UK energy crisis: wow, this is getting serious. Link to UK panic here. Again, you will hit a paywall, but can easily get past the paywall on an iPhone or an iPad with IOS 13. One more reason to love Apple.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.  

Ford: adding 450 jobs to double production of its F-150 Lightning electric truck. The truck has not even hit the market yet, but has already received 150,000 reservations. The company plans to double manufacturing production to 80,000 trucks/year. Link here.

My favorite graph: the data is updated at the end of each month but takes a week or so to get published. It takes time; it's a lot of data. To the best of my knowledge, we only have data current as of July 31, 2021. We should be getting August 31, 2021, data soon; it may be already out but I haven't seen it. I see there is an August report but it still only covers data through the end of July, 2021.

On Friday, September 17, 2021, Reuters reported that "US money market funds saw the biggest weekly outflow in nine months." Link here.

• U.S. money market funds saw an outflow of $43.34 billion in the week to Wednesday, the largest since December 16, 2020;
• so, we're talking about the week from Thursday, September 9, 2021, to Wednesday, September 15?
• what would people be doing, taking all that money out of money market funds? Buying used cars? Buying real estate? Paying for college?
• the core measure of U.S. consumer prices edged up 0.1% last month, the smallest gain since February, 2021. The August slowdown gives the Federal Reserve breathing room as it prepares to reduce its massive bond holdings and decide how soon to begin lifting rates from near zero to not-so-near zero;
  
• meanwhile, U.S. equity funds attracted a net $5.54 billion after seeing outflows worth $1.83 billion in the previous week
• U.S. equity value (dividend-paying companies) funds lured a net $1.28 billion, and growth funds received a net $208 million, after each saw an outflow in the previous week.

Fox Business also noted that investors "were swapping cash for stocks in 'rapid frenzy' ahead of the Fed meeting this next week (https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/investors-swap-cash-stocks-rapid-frenzy-ahead-fed-meeting). In that report, Fox breathlessly reported;

• investors pulled nearly $62 billion from cash accounts this week
• of that, $51 billion into equities; $16 billion into bonds
• a record $28 billion into US large-cap stock funds; tech stocks saw a week of inflows that has seen $3.2 trillion enter the space;
• investors "existed cash at the fastest pace in more than a year and poured money into stocks" -- and yet the market has been down for several consecutive days lately;
• this was a "monster reallocation cash-to-stocks as tax redistribution threat recedes and the Fed is expected to remain Wall Street friendly
• remember: Jay Powell is more concerned with unemployment than with inflation;
• the benchmark S&P 500:
• has gained 185 this year;
• has gone 377 days without a 10% pullback, the longest stretch since February, 2016, to February, 2018;

By the way, what was the August 18, 2021, report? Link here.

• from June 30, 2021 to July 30, 2021: mmf assets decreased by $18 billion -- that was a full month -- $18 billion over one month; then in one week, last week, outflows were over $43 billion

Let's look at that graph above;

• $5 trillion to $4.8 trillion: $200 billion.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

I don't think Jim Cramer mentioned any of this. He's looking for a sizable correction in September.