The Days Ahead: Jackson Hole Symposium, which is often a good source of Central Bank think. Very thin economic reports and corporate earnings season is all but done.

One-Minute Summary: Consumer confidence fell. That surprised some but we think it’s not tied to claims and employment, which are running well. But to wages. I know we bang on about this a lot and there are plenty of others following the same story.

Wage increases are barely positive and we believe even those numbers are inflated by supervisory pay. In other words, non-supervisory employees are seeing negative growth in real wages. There are many more workers than bosses so we think the average number is misleading. And it’s been happening all year. There are plenty of plausible and conflicting reasons why this is happening but none are important to markets right here right now. We'll just leave it that consumer spending cannot sustain a 4% growth rate. Wages aren't strong enough.

Gold was down (it usually drops if the dollar strengthens). The S&P 500 finished mostly higher with defensive sectors (telecomm and staples) ahead. The 10-Year Treasury was up. Economic news was mixed. Slow housing starts. Strong retail sales. Productivity growth stayed around its recent, not-so-great trend. Tesla dropped and Elon Musk apologized.

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