Employment Uncertainty Growth, Election Uncertainty Persists
Welcome to RBC’s Markets in Motion podcast, recorded September 9th, 2024. I’m Lori Calvasina, Head of US Equity Strategy at RBC Capital Markets. Please listen to the end of this podcast for important disclaimers. Three big things you need to know: First, Friday’s jobs report added to investors’ uncertainty regarding the labor market, but the data point that concerned us from last week was the spike in Tech layoffs in the Challenger report. Second, election uncertainty has persisted with policy getting greater attention from both sides. We run through our US equity market read throughs from Trump’s economic speech last week. Third, in our discussion of other updates from our high frequency indicators, we review what we’re watching in terms of potential near-term downside levels for the S&P 500, sentiment, and the Semis trade. If you’d like to hear more, here’s another 6 minutes. Now, let’s jump into the details. Starting with Takeaway #1: Employment Uncertainty Has Grown After Friday’s Jobs Report, But The Spike In Tech Layoffs In The Challenger Report Spooked Us The Most Regarding Stocks RBC’s economics team noted that while the report “doesn’t point to a sharp contraction in the labor market, it also gave no indications that the broader cooling trend – which is not welcomed by the Federal Reserve – has in any way run its course.” From our seat in US equity strategy, we generally agree with the idea that the jobs report is still consistent with cooling and normalization as opposed to an economy on the cusp of recession. That being said, we were a little spooked by some of the details in the Challenger layoff report that came out earlier in the week. The overall level of layoffs moved up in August, but remained well below the spikes associated with past recessions, and was even a bit below the moves higher seen in 2023-2024 and 2015. What caught our attention was the spike in layoffs for Technology companies which wasn’t as bad as those seen in late 2022 and early 2023, but otherwise rivals some of the worst spikes this industry has seen over time. This primarily worries us in regards to the Tech sector itself and the broader market by way of the rotation trade. Though layoff announcements moved up slightly in a few other industries, those were generally mild relative to history. Moving on to Takeaway #2: Election Uncertainty Persists, With Policy Getting Greater Attention We continue to see the US election as a key challenge that the US equity market will need to work through in coming months, due to the uncertainty that the event has injected into the outlook. We do usually see a pullback in the S&P 500 in September and October of Presidential election years, with a rebound afterwards. Thinking about today specifically, a number of companies referred to this idea that the election has injected some uncertainty into the outlook in their recent earnings calls. Meanwhile, Harris has pulled ahead of Trump in the PredictIt betting market and RCP polling average, but the race still looks quite close on these data sets, as well as in the polling for the swing states. We do believe the stock market has been paying attention to the event given the alignment we’ve continued to see between S&P 500 performance and expectations that Trump will win in betting markets. One of the primary things the stock market cares about regarding the election is domestic policy, and investors have been getting new information on the policy leanings of both Harris and Trump over the past few weeks. In our latest report, we’ve recapped our early thoughts on the stock market read throughs of Trump’s domestic policy agenda as described in his speech to the Economic Club of New York last week. We think it’s premature to put on any significant sector or industry trades...
