~4.3 million more Americans filed for unemployment this week, and while that brings the quarantine-era total to ~26 million, inching us closer to a 20% unemployment rate, new claims are trending downward. Unfortunately, so are our manufacturing numbers which have slipped well into contraction territory and are on a path to revisit their financial-crisis lows.

Earth Day looks to be celebrating the big 5-0 this year with a continuing meltdown of the fossil fuel industry. Oil prices have fallen (deeply, in some cases) into negative, can’t-even-give-it-away territory. As demand lingers at historic lows, the immediate issue facing the industry is a severe lack of storage capacity.

In unsurprising news to anyone who’s been keeping an eye on their screen time reports lately, tech companies like Facebook and Amazon are riding a wave of increased traffic in the #socialdistancing era. And as demand falters in other sectors, just five of these companies have cornered over 21% of the S&P 500 Index’s market-cap, flashing reminders of the ultra-concentrated days of ’99-’00. Is such massive concentration sustainable?

Unsurprisingly, U.S. manufacturing has taken a significant hit in the current environment. Regional Fed surveys are showing levels not seen since 2009, with New York posting a nearly 80% contraction this month. Still, production numbers declined less overall in March than might’ve been expected…could the same possibly hold true for April?

A few weeks ago we provided a Special Update from BCM’s Managing Partner and Portfolio Manager, Dave Haviland. At that time the market was near the depths of the first wave of the market meltdown and the future looked grim. Since then, we have experienced a short respite with a decent equity market rally and moderate slowdown of the rate of daily new coronavirus cases.

While high-frequency measures such as the New York Fed’s Weekly Economic Index have us bracing for significant losses to GDP, consensus on expectations is a hard thing to come by these days. Macroeconomic uncertainty has reached unprecedented levels and every analyst out their has their own unique interpretation…which should make for an interesting earnings season.

As we head into what is likely to be a particularly unique earnings season, signals out of the equity markets remain mixed. Transports are still down almost 30% from the print high and small & mid-caps continue to struggle, but Utilities and REITS have surged towards recovery and equities as a whole are coming off one of their best weeks in decades.

We’re taking a break from our normal Fireside Charts today in honor of the holiday week/weekend. We’ll be back on Monday with our regularly scheduled Fireside Charts! In the meantime, here is an ad from the Ohio Department of Health that perfectly illustrates the purpose of social distancing.

Stocks soared Monday on hopes that COVID-19 had reached its peak in epicenters like New York and Italy, but such rallies aren’t uncommon in bear markets, and the euphoria was short lived. Such swings may be the norm for a while now given that many companies have withdrawn their earnings guidance, leaving investment decisions more subject to headlines and sentiment.