In this edition, Malibu's shares look titanic, how to navigate the ESG landscape in 2023, pizza, restaurant margins under pressure, and Microsoft, Charter Communications and Roper Technologies.

Stocks wavered on Friday morning following new inflation data and earnings reports from Intel and American Express, but have turned positive as of this writing. The Commerce Department said that its personal consumption expenditures price index - the Fed's preferred measure of inflation - rose 5.0% from the prior year in December, slowing from 5.5% growth in November and continuing a recent downward trend. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, the core PCE rose 4.4% from the prior year, down from 4.7% in November and in line with the consensus estimate. Intel shares fell about 8% after the chipmaker posted disappointing 4Q results and offered weak guidance for the current first quarter. American Express jumped 12% despite below-consensus earnings, as investors focused on management's strong full-year guidance.

Stocks were mostly higher in volatile trading on Thursday morning, led by the Energy and Consumer Discretionary sectors. GDP data was stronger than expected. In its advance estimate, the Commerce Department said that the U.S. economy expanded at a 2.9% annualized rate in 4Q, above the Bloomberg consensus forecast of 2.6% though down from 3.2% growth in 3Q. The Dow was flat, the S&P rose 0.3%, and the Nasdaq rose 0.7%. Crude oil rose nearly 2% to $81.50 per barrel, while gold fell $17 to $1926 per ounce.

Rapidly rising inflation 2022 knocked stocks into a bear market. While growth strategies suffered the most, value strategies also declined. Even bond prices were lower last year. Volatility, which has dropped from the highs of 2020, still has not returned to pre-COVID levels. Is it time for investors to cash in their chips? We note that investors exit the stock market at their own peril, as long-term returns from equities consistently have outpaced long-term returns from other asset classes, such as fixed income and cash. As well, those fixed-income returns are from eras when the 10-year Treasury bond yield was much higher than the current 3.5% level. So what's a potential equity strategy for investors amid all the uncertainty? Argus believes that Min Vol is an all-weather strategy that is timely in any investing climate.

Chartists have spent many hours over many years looking for the Holy Grail of technical indicators -- and most have realized that one does not exist. Surprisingly, many of the best indicators are simple -- and why they work so well is often easily explainable. That brings us to the moving average crossover, which is a mere two averages that give buy and sell signals when they cross. We've tested many combinations -- and while some are very good, they all have their faults.

Is the Fed Using the Right Playbook?

Stocks fell on Wednesday morning as investors weighed earnings reports from Microsoft, Boeing, and AT&T. Microsoft shares fell after the company posted mixed results and offered disappointing sales guidance for the current quarter, driven in part by a slowdown in the Azure cloud services business. On the positive side, AT&T shares rose 5% following better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings and strong growth in wireless subscribers. The Dow fell 0.6%, the S&P 0.7%, and the Nasdaq 1.0%. Crude oil rose 1% to $81 per barrel, while gold traded near $1935 per ounce.

We anticipate that activity in the consumer sector, which was the primary driver of GDP growth in 2022, will slow as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates and companies keep cutting jobs. The sector is all-important to the economy and accounts for about two-thirds of GDP. The main driver to the consumer sector is the jobs market. While the domestic employment environment is in better shape than it was two years ago, it is starting to show signs of deterioration. Though the unemployment rate is 3.5%, it seems headed inevitably higher in the wake of layoff announcements from high-profile companies such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon.com, Salesforce.com, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. Meanwhile, consumer balance sheets appear to be weakening somewhat after multiple quarters of spending growth. A combination of pandemic-related factors -- such as economic shutdowns and aggressive fiscal spending -- resulted in a sharp improvement in household finances in 2020. Indeed, the stimulus program initially lifted personal savings to almost $5 trillion. But that money has been spent, and then some: the personal savings level has come down to $625 billion, below the $1 trillion average level in the decade prior to the pandemic. With savings tapped, a slowdown in the all-important consumer sector seems likely in 1H23. Here are some of our top "cautious consumer" stocks for 2023.

The Vickers Top Buyers & Sellers is a daily report that identifies the five companies the largest insider purchase transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions as well as the five companies the largest insider sales transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions.

Monday Tee Up: Inflation and Earnings

In this edition, Fortune Brands remodels its business, capital allocations matter more, utilities stocks set to settle, and Nordstrom, Moderna, and Align Technology.