The 'Hiring-Data' Trade Could Deliver 203% Upside

For just the third time in 15 years, I'm seeing a major red flag in my hiring data.

This is the same exact data that hedge funds pay me big money for.

I'm sharing it with you today because it made my jaw hit the floor...

And because it's creating a trade that could potentially deliver you 200%+ upside.

The 'Hiring-Data' Trade Could Deliver 203% Upside

As regular Moneyball readers know, I do a deep dive into my hiring data every month.

Basically, every month for the last 15 years, I've been going out and collecting company-specific hiring data for almost a thousand publicly-traded enterprises.

Hedge funds pay me big money to get this data. But I'm excited to share it with you here.

Let's start by aggregating this data and looking at it at the sector-level. And let's look at it year-over-year – May 2023 versus May 2022.

Ready?

Let's Start with the Sector-Level Data

Here it is:

See what I see? Hiring is down, down, down across the board!

Every sector is hiring fewer people this year than it did at the same time last year.

Some sectors are less bad, like utilities and energy. And those are the sectors – the least negative ones – I've been talking about recently as good places to position yourself.

High tech is at the bottom. Makes sense. And so are the banks. Because let's face it – May was terrible for Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic.

2024: The Year of the Bull

The reason I'm pointing this out is because the last two times things looked this bad, we were in the midst of a recession.

And it was looking like this because, let's face it, after companies stop hiring, the next step is they start firing.

But I believe it's going to be a different story this year. You see, I think these negative numbers are positive news. I believe companies are gearing up for 2024 to be the Year of the Bull.

Now, I know what you might be thinking: "Hey Zatlin, you just told me that this data of yours is basically batting a thousand for predicting a recession. But this time is going to be different? How do you land on that conclusion? How can negative numbers like these be a positive?"

To explain, let me paint a picture for you. Then I'll show you the numbers...

Imagine it's Thanksgiving...

Imagine it's Thanksgiving. And you've been holding back from eating all day, you've been starving yourself. But then the feast begins, and you just start gorging. Oh, my Gosh – in a matter of an hour, you pound a lot of food. You even top it off with some dessert.

But then – no surprise – you hit the pause button.

Well, that's precisely where we are in today's economy. Remember, because of Covid, we fired 22 million people overnight. And it took two years of gorging to bring them all back. And then we added even more people. But now it's time to pause.

Companies have already hired all the people they need. They can't hire any more. That's why they've hit pause – not because there's negativity out there, but because they already feasted!

And once we're done with that pause, we're going to start moving forward again. And that's what's going to lead to a bullish run next year!

Now let me show you how this story is backed up by the numbers...

An Additional Four Million Hires

Here's a 10-year snapshot of payrolls:

As you can see, the pullback during Covid led to 21.9 million people being fired.

It took about two years to pull them all back in. And then we spent the last year adding in almost four million more people.

No wonder we hit the pause button! We're not looking at mass layoffs. It's just that companies aren't hiring because they're already "full."

We've Normalized

To prove that this is normal, let me show you the same picture as above, but in a slightly different way.

Let's just strip out the numbers in red:

Look at the upper right. That's where we are today with payrolls. Now look back to where we were before Covid. See that straight line? The reality is, if Covid hadn't happened, we'd be at the same payroll level we're at today. We've normalized. So now it's time to take a break.

One Specific Trade

I'm generally bullish at today's equilibrium point. But the lack of hiring across the board is bad news for a couple sectors. Very bad.

This is creating a specific trade I'd like to share with my Moneyball PRO subscribers.

Basically, I want to show you how to take advantage of my hiring data to make what could potentially lead to upside of more than 200%.

This could be a great play, and I'd like to share it with you.

In the meantime. We're in it to win it. Zatlin out.

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