Welcome to Advisorpedia's Week Ahead.  Here's what's happened last week and ahead for this week.

Last week’s market recap 


S&P 500 has made 19 record-high closes in 2021 alone - the last one was yesterday thanks to a 0.15% gain on record low volume for 2021
As of last Monday’s close, the S&P 500 was more than 2.5 SD above its 50-day moving average, which was not only the most extreme overbought reading in the last year but also the most overbought level since February 2017. Keep in mind that extreme overbought readings don't mean that the market has to immediately sell off, but it often suggests that a rally is due for a pause.
Market stalled out a bit last week - economic data no longer having a material impact on the markets which suggests a lot is already priced in.
Sentiment stretched from last Thursday’s AAII report -  bullish sentiment surged by the most since November to 56.90%.  The last time this reading was higher was way back in early 2018. That year SP500 closed the year down 14.5%, Nasdaq Comp -18.2%, Russell 2000 -22.5% and Dow -13.1% from their intra-year highs


REALITY OF THE JOBS MARKET


Unemployment data don’t include the 4m who left the labor force these past thirteen months. 
We have a total of 6m outside the labor force who told the BLS they would take a job if offered one. 
We have another 6 million underemployed in the sense that they are working part-time but would prefer to have a full-time job. 
In total, the aggregate pool of available labor currently sits at 17 million, which is 50% above the pre-pandemic level of 11 million. 
With the economy now 72% engaged, and there are still 8.4 million less employed persons than before the pandemic struck - that’s a story of productivity GAINS and concerns over how the face of the labor pool and jobs has changed


Quick warning on bonds


Average yields for CCC-rated bonds have fallen to a record low of 6.1% while Treasury yields are almost at pre-pandemic levels
Different between high investment grade corporate and junk plunged to 200 basis points - 3 year low
Money managers are loading up on this stuff like there is no default risk


ECONOMIC OUTLOOK


Jamie Dimon’s letter (JP Morgan) 66 pages and 35,000 words. Man has some time on his hands

Called for a boom through 2023 and Goldilocks moment - remember bears come next!
Just over a year ago he predicted 20% unemployment (actual 14.8%) and in August 2018 he called for the 10-year to hit 5% (peaked at just over 3% and was down to just over 2% pre-pandemic)


Good news for global economy - Shipping companies ordered a record volume of container ships last month, signally confidence in rising global trade volumes. In 2020 the ratio of order books to fleet size had reached a 30-year low.
Put this into the category of things I never thought I’d see - last week France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that “we are not far from an agreement within the OECD” on a global minimum tax system, following US Treasury Secretary Yellen’s comments on such last week. Le Maire also noted “very in-depth discussions at the technical level” between the French and American governments on digital taxation, an issue which nearly sparked a trade war last year.


Economic data to watch this Week


Monday, April 12: March Treasury Budget.
Tuesday, April 13: March Consumer Price Index.
Wednesday, April 14: Weekly MBA Mortgage Applications Index; March Import/Export Prices; Weekly EIA Crude Oil Inventories; April Fed Beige Book.
Thursday, April 15: Weekly and Continuing Jobless Claims; April Philly Fed Index; March Retail Sales; March Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization; February Business Inventories; April NAHB Housing Market Index; EIA Natural Gas Inventory report; February Net Long-Term TIC Flows. 
Friday, April 16: March Housing Starts & Building Permits; April University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment(Preliminary).


Earnings to Watch This Week


This week we’ll officially kick off the Q1 earnings season as the major banks all start to report results this week. The pace of reports will start off slow but steadily pick up steam as the days go on. 
Just 23 companies are scheduled to report this week, but that number will more than triple he next week and then more than double again the week of 4/26 which is the peak week for reports. There will be one more busy week of reports after that before things start to peter out after the first week of May.


...... and so much more.

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