TMI Snapshots:  NDRC Coal "Guidance", NFP Preview, European Labor Strength

Managing Director

Elan Gore

TMI Data Science

TMI Data Science utilizes Natural Language Processing to build custom leading indicators using unstructured data sourced from the global financial, trade & traditional media.  Our proprietary software, TMI Machine, is a text-mining platform designed with the buy-side & capital markets professional in mind, text-mining the global media to discern and quantify nuanced qualitative shifts in press coverage as they apply to macroeconomics, equity indexes/ETFs, commodities, currencies, fixed income & individual equities.  TMI provides custom leading indicators and systematic trading strategies, operating at the nexus of linguistics & statistics drawing on vast experience in investment banking and hedge fund settings in senior quantitative and fundamental roles.  

TMI Data Science was founded by Elan Gore, an award-winning Senior Global Basic Materials Equity Analyst & China Economist with 15 years of experience in North American hedge funds & institutional managers; and Alessandro Porrino, Ph.D., an Algorithmic Trading Analyst and Programmer with 10 years of front-office experience ranging from complex FX option pricing to auto-hedging strategies at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Standard Chartered.  Mr. Gore holds an MBA in Finance from New York University Stern School of Business, and Mr. Porrino holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Brunel University London.

Macroeconomics

iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT US)

<p>In last month's <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/insights/tmi-snapshots-is-a-tight-labor-market-already-slowing-payrolls-growth" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="insights:51144" rel="noopener">TMI Snapshots:  Is a Tight Labor Market Already Slowing Payrolls Growth?</a> published ahead of the April nonfarm payrolls release, we noted a +2.5x STDEV M/M jump in media reports of labor shortages in various iterations (i.e. "tight labor market", "struggling to hire", "hard to find workers" etc.) and a 2-year high in the absolute number of weekly mentions of shortages (roughly 110 unique articles per week at the end of April in US national publications.)  Back in 2018-19, such spikes in reports of labor shortages tended to precede a slowing in payrolls growth; thus we suspected April nonfarm payrolls would come in weaker than expected.</p><p>As we revisit the data ahead of the May payrolls release, we acknowledge the situation is more nuanced for a variety of reasons and alternative employment data points are mixed.  Our labor shortages indicator continued to surge in the first half of May, hitting a record high of +5x STDEVs on May 13 and correcting since to +3x by the end of the month; similarly, the absolute number of trailing 7-day mentions of labor shortages in national US news surged to a new record of &gt;300 unique articles as of May 13 and ended the month at ~150, still above April levels but well off the highs:</p><section class="figure"><figure class="editor-figure mceNonEditable"><img src="https://static-prod.smartkarma.com/images/media/000/210/753/original/LABOR_SHORTAGE_REPORTS_MAY.PNG?1622640352" class="editor-image img-responsive" data-smartkarma-image-id="210753"></figure><div class="content-caption">Labor Shortage Reports &amp; General Employment Sentiment vs. Total Private Payrolls <section class="figure"><figure class="editor-figure mceNonEditable"><img src="https://static-prod.smartkarma.com/images/media/000/210/756/original/ABSOLUTE_NUMBER_MENTIONS.PNG?1622641122" class="editor-image img-responsive" data-smartkarma-image-id="210756"></figure><div class="content-caption">Absolute Number of Weekly Mentions of Labor Shortages in National US Publications</div></section>
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<div class="content-highlight"><section class="figure">TMI Data Science utilizes Natural Language Processing to build custom leading indicators using unstructured data sourced from the global financial, trade &amp; traditional media. Our proprietary tools text-mine the global media to discern and quantify nuanced qualitative shifts in press coverage as they apply to macroeconomics, equity indexes/ETFs, commodities, currencies, fixed income &amp; individual equities. </section></div></section>

In last month's TMI Snapshots:  Is a Tight Labor Market Already Slowing Payrolls Growth? published ahead of the April nonfarm payrolls release, we noted a +2.5x STDEV M/M jump in media reports of labor shortages in various iterations (i.e. "tight labor market", "struggling to hire", "hard to find workers" etc.) and a 2-year high in the absolute number of weekly mentions of shortages (roughly 110 unique articles per week at the end of April in US national publications.)  Back in 2018-19, such spikes in reports of labor shortages tended to precede a slowing in payrolls growth; thus we suspected April nonfarm payrolls would come in weaker than expected.As we revisit the data ahead of the May payrolls release, we acknowledge the situation is more nuanced for a variety of reasons and alternative employment data points are mixed.  Our labor shortages indicator continued to surge in the first half of May, hitting a record high of +5x STDEVs on May 13 and correcting since to +3x by the end of the month; similarly, the absolute number of trailing 7-day mentions of labor shortages in national US news surged to a new record of &gt;300 unique articles as of May 13 and ended the month at ~150, still above April levels but well off the highs:Labor Shortage Reports &amp; General Employment Sentiment vs. Total Private Payrolls Absolute Number of Weekly Mentions of Labor Shortages in National US Publications

TMI Data Science utilizes Natural Language Processing to build custom leading indicators using unstructured data sourced from the global financial, trade &amp; traditional media. Our proprietary tools text-mine the global media to discern and quantify nuanced qualitative shifts in press coverage as they apply to macroeconomics, equity indexes/ETFs, commodities, currencies, fixed income &amp; individual equities. 

TMI Snapshot:  Did Labor Shortages Continue to Hamper Payrolls Growth in May?