Retail Sales Nowcast

  • The Chicago Fed Advance Retail Trade Summary (CARTS) tracks the U.S. Census Bureau’s Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS) on a weekly basis, providing an early snapshot of national retail spending.
  • It is released twice a month.
  • It uses credit card and other high-frequency alternative data to put together a forecast.
  • The result is a very accurate prediction of retail sales (ex auto).
  • Currently, April is predicted to be weak (no consensus estimates yet).

Snippet Finance Content Hub

  • I am excited to publish a curated list of the best blogs, tools, and webpages that form the heart of Snippet Finance.
  • The list is organized by category with other groupings like sector, geography, and type of content.
  • Use the controls at the top to filter, group, and search.
  • You can also rate content creators and leave a review.
  • You can submit ideas of good content creators here.
  • Note the list is best viewed on a desktop.

Knowing Things is Hard

  • A dictionary of how hard it is to get true knowledge – biases and more.
  • FFriedman’s Law of Anecdotes (2010) “Distrust any historical anecdote good enough to have survived on its literary merit”
  • BBrandolini’s Law, the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle (2013): “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”
  • C – … Predictions, like advice, often tell you more about the person giving them than about the world.
  • DDefensiveness: its embarrassing to be wrong in public, so once you have publicly committed to a position its hard to change your mind. 

FOIA Search

  • “Every year, the SEC spends ~$14 million responding to 10,000+ FOIA requests. If the SEC responds to a FOIA request with a B7A exemption, that indicates the subject company is likely under an undisclosed SEC investigation, which is “associated with significant negative future abnormal returns.”
  • With FOIAsearch.com, you can easily find all past FOIA requests on a company and B7A investigation exemptions in a single search.
  • Source.

Job Posting Tracker

  • An extremely useful site (h/t) for tracking job postings by industry or company.
  • Here for example is what Walmart hiring looks like.
  • Shockingly the retail giant said they won’t be doing any seasonal hiring this year. In contrast, they hired 40,000 seasonal workers last year, and 150,000 in 2021.
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