The week ahead is jampacked with economic indicator releases. The big ones are for inflation, retail sales, and production. They may be somewhat stagflationary on balance, showing inflation remains too high while economic growth is slowing. Nevertheless, we still expect to see inflation moderate with solid economic growth over the rest of ...

One of our competitors claims that we are in a recession. Another claims that we will soon be in a recession. The most widely anticipated recession of all times is turning into the longest widely anticipated recession of all times. One day, the diehard hard-landers will be right. Was today the day? We're sure that their heartbeats quickened ...

Since just before the pandemic during January 2020 through March of this year, the CPI indexes for new autos, auto maintenance & repairs, and auto insurance are up 21.0%, 34.8%, and 44.6% (chart). These all exceed the 20.6% increase in the headline CPI over this period. Why?Americans are buying lots more expensive light trucks than passenger ...

It's slim pickings this week on the US economic front. The news is mostly about credit conditions. Then again, earnings reporting season isn't over. And, we can always count on the members of the Federal Open Mouth Committee to make headlines now that their blackout period is over. Here is what we can expect from this week's credit ...

Keep your seat belts on: There may be a few more loop-the-loops in the stock market's rollercoaster ride. Or at least wear a neck brace. It's been a wild ride recently. After peaking at a record high on March 28, the S&P 500 plunged below its 50-day moving average and rose last week closing just below this average (chart). Geopolitical ...

The US federal deficit reminds us of the 1958 science fiction horror classic, "The Blob." It stars none-other than Steve McQueen, in his first leading role. The blob is an amoeba-like alien creature that crashes to Earth from outer space and feeds on humans, getting bigger and bigger with every bite. The federal deficit is getting bigger ...

American consumers are doing what they do best: They are consuming goods and services. Their consumption of services has been especially strong. So the demand for workers by several major services industries has been particularly strong. In turn, robust employment gains have boosted consumers' purchasing power and spending. We have ...

This week will feature some key inflation numbers. The March headline CPI (Wed) and PPI (Mar) will get a boost from higher gasoline prices. Their core inflation rates should continue to moderate. The week starts with the FRBNY survey of inflation expectations (Mon). The pump price of gasoline jumped last month and probably boosted ...

Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke at Stanford University today about the economy and monetary policy. He said, "I think we've gotten to what is, knock on wood, a pretty good place." He added, "We're using our tools to try to bring inflation down the rest of the way to 2%, while all the while keeping the economy strong as well." Today's data ...

Today's batch of economic indicators was mostly sweet. Q4's real GDP was revised from 3.2% to 3.4% (chart). The Atlanta Fed GDPNow model is projecting 2.1% for Q1-2024. Consumer spending was revised up from 3.0% to 3.3% despite fears that it would be depressed by the resumption of student loan payments. We disputed that notion by observing ...

Powell & Co. were more dovish today than we (and stock investors) expected. The FOMC's Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) still implied three 25bps cuts in the federal funds rate (FFR) this year (table). That's the same projection as in December's SEP even though the median forecast was raised for real GDP growth (to 2.1% from 1.4%) and ...

In a February 29 LinkedIn post, Ray Dalio wrote that his bubble gauge for the overall stock market is at a mid-range reading of 52 (chart). He concluded that the stock market "doesn't look very bubbly." His meter is based on six inputs that signal whether speculative activity is too widespread. So it is currently indicating rational ...

We have nothing to fear but nothing to fear. The Fed is done tightening. The economy is doing fine. Inflation is moderating. The stock market is hitting record highs. So what's wrong with this picture? Nothing other than it is the consensus view, and ours too. Today, there are lots of happy bulls, including us. We would be happier if there ...

January's Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) was down again by 0.4% (chart). It has been falling since December 2021. It was the 23rd straight monthly decline, just one month short of the record-long slump that began in April 2007 and ran through March 2009 during the Great Financial Crisis. January's Index of Coincident ...

Contrary indicator alert! On Sunday, the WSJ posted an article titled "These Teenagers Know More About Investing Than You Do: Custodial investment accounts for minors have surged in popularity." According to the article, the kids are all buying technology stocks: "Brokerage executives say that technology behemoths that are ubiquitous in the ...

Retail sales fell 0.8% m/m in January, much weaker than expected (chart). Leading the way down was a 4.1% drop in building materials & garden equipment & supplies.Following the release of January's employment report, we anticipated some weakness in retail sales because the 0.2% increase in payrolls was offset by an odd 0.6% drop in average ...

The stock market has been melting up since late October 2023, when investors concluded that the Fed was done raising interest rates. It melted up during the fall and winter. We think it might continue to do so in the spring and summer. It could be a meltup for all seasons. Leading the S&P 500 stock price index to a new record high on Friday ...

The job market remains strong. That was the message from a couple of labor market indicators today. The most timely was January's consumer confidence survey. The series for "jobs hard to get" dropped to 9.8% of respondents, almost a record-low reading (chart). This suggests that the unemployment rate remained below 4.0% this month.The ...

The week ahead should be another good one for our "immaculate disinflation" scenario. December's Index of Coincident Economic Indicators (Mon) probably rose to another record high (chart). Payroll employment rose to a new high last month. Real personal income and real business sales of goods probably did the same. Production upticked in ...

Chevron CEO Michael Wirth warned yesterday in a CNBC interview that the Red Sea crisis could disrupt oil supplies and quickly push oil prices higher: "So much of the world's oil flows through that region that were it to be cut off, I think you could see things change very rapidly," he said. So what did the price of oil do today? It edged ...

Both the bond and stock markets didn't do much on Friday following the release of December's employment report and NM-PMI. The former looked better-than-expected at first, but not as strong in the details (and downward revisions of the previous two months), and wage inflation was higher than expected. The NM-PMI was weaker than expected led by ...

Everybody in the stock market (at least everybody with long positions, which includes most investors) has been happy since the S&P 500 bottomed on October 27–until it stumbled a bit today. The market was up in the morning despite a dive by FedEx shares. But stock prices tumbled during a late afternoon selloff. Most pundits concluded that ...

S&P 500 earnings per share are heading up according to industry analysts. We agree. There was lots of pessimism over the past year, with a few influential Wall Street strategists predicting that this year's result could break bad, i.e., below $200. We stuck with our projections of $225 for this year and $250 for 2024, which seemed farfetched ...

The bond market liked today's Beige Book, the collection of regional surveys of economic activity conducted by each of the 12 Fed district banks. While Q3's real GDP growth was revised up to a red hot 5.2%, the latest survey from October 6 to November 17 was more like a cool beige color. Six of the 12 Fed banks reported slight declines in ...

China's economy is in a property-led and fertility-led depression. That's bad news for China's people and for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but benefits countries that import Chinese goods at depressed prices. China's weak economy is good news for the US in particular, helping to moderate goods inflation without a recession here, ...

Fed officials often have said that they want to make sure that inflation is "well anchored." In other words, they want to see that inflationary expectations are low. So it was a bit unsettling that Friday's release of the consumer sentiment survey for the first half of November showed the one-year expected inflation rate jumped from 3.2% ...

The Fed may not be as almighty as Fed officials believe. The FOMC has raised the federal funds rate aggressively by 525bps since March 2022. Their goal was to slow economic growth to subdue inflation. Yet the economy grew rapidly during Q3 and the unemployment rate has remained below 4.0% since February 2022. Nevertheless, inflation has ...

Today's bond and stock rallies was boosted by Q3's Productivity and Costs report released at 8:30 am. It confirms our view that strong economic growth isn't inflationary if it is driven by productivity growth. Fed officials have been trying to slow the economy down to subdue inflation. Our analysis suggests that they should allow ...

The economic news today was very good. But the stock market sold off sharply for the second day in a row led by a 1.90% drop in the Nasdaq, while the S&P 500 fell 1.19% today (chart). That's even though the bond market behaved with the 10-year Treasury yield falling from 4.985% at 8:25 am to 4.851% by the close. But that decline was probably ...

Fed Chair Jerome Powell should be very concerned about the rapid disinversion of the yield curve since early July as the bond yield soared from around 4.00% to nearly 5.00% today. If he is, he didn't show it during his interview today. Instead, he noted that the economy remains strong and monetary policy might have to be tightened some more: ...

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate rocketed up to 8.00% today. It is up from 7.57% on October 12 (chart). That's the highest it has been since most of the 1990s. The 10-year US Treasury bond yield rose to 4.91% today. That along with the unnerving crisis in the Middle East unnerved the stock market today. Mortgage applications to purchase new ...

Yin and yang. The forces of darkness appeared in the bond market while light shined in the stock market today. Bond investors would like to see weaker economic indicators to have more confidence that inflation can continue to moderate. The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index remained relatively elevated at 51.8 on Friday (chart). They would ...

On December 23, 1776, Thomas Paine famously opined: "These are the times that try men's souls." He did so in an article titled, "The Crisis." On Friday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon kicked off Q3's earnings season with a stern warning to investors: "Now may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades," he wrote in the ...

The bond market was closed today for Columbus Day. However, the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) surged 2.34%. This evening, the 10-year US Treasury bond yield dropped from 4.80% on Friday to 4.65%. The S&P 500 was weak in the morning, but rose 0.63% today (chart). It held its 200-day moving average last week (chart). That's ...

Hurray! The bond market will be closed next Monday for Columbus Day. It has done enough damage in recent weeks. Today, the 10-year Treasury bond yield rose to 4.81% just because job openings edged up in August (chart). Nevertheless, we think the trend is still downward. The same goes for quits. Both are highly correlated with wage inflation ...

Just after the S&P 500 nearly hit our year-end target of 4600 ahead of schedule on July 31, we concluded that the index might fall to its 200-day moving average, which is currently around 4200. It could easily do so during October since it closed at 4288 on Friday. Then we see a yearend Santa Claus rally back to 4600, or close to that level. ...

September is usually a nice month weather-wise. After the dog days of summer, the temperature starts to cool with occasional hot spells reminiscent of the summer. On the other hand, the month can be a rough one for stocks. The S&P 500 is down 1.3% mtd so far. That's not so bad. Then again, the month's worst performing sector is ...

This could be a big week for the stock and bond markets. There will be lots of market-moving inflation indicators: Inflation expectations (Mon), small business pricing intentions (Tue), CPI (Wed), PPI (Thu), and import & export prices (Fri). There will also be a couple of business cycle indicators that could move the markets: retail sales ...

September is the Rodney Dangerfield of the 12 months; it gets no respect because it has been the worst month for stocks on average since 1928 (chart). However, it has been up 45% of the time since then with a solid average gain of 3.2%. Even if the market is down this month, September is a good month for picking apples and it could be a good ...

The US doesn't have to experience a recession to bring inflation down if China's export prices are falling because China is already in a recession. Consider the following: (1) This evening we learned that China's CPI fell 0.3% y/y during July, the first such drop since February 2021. The PPI fell 4.4% over the same period (chart). (2) The ...

We've been busy bees today as a slew of economic indicators have entered our hive. On balance, they show that the global economy is weak, while the US economy is strong, though the US banking system has some stress cracks. Consider the following: (1) Moody's downgrades the banks. First and foremost, stock prices fell, while bond prices rose ...

Wow! This morning's Q2 Productivity and Costs report was surprisingly good, but a bit hard to believe. Nonfarm productivity jumped 3.7% q/q (saar) as output increased 2.4% (the same as real GDP), while hours worked fell 1.3% (chart). The decline in hours worked is the first decline since Q2-2020 and was the result of a 1.3% decline in ...

The bull market's winning streak ended today. The Dow closed higher for 13 straight sessions through Wednesday, its longest series of positive closes since 1987. It was down 0.67% today. The Dow's longest-ever winning streak was 14 sessions, set in 1897, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. The S&P 500 closed at 4537.41 today after hitting a ...

The flash S&P global PMIs for July suggest that the global economy continues to avoid a hard landing, while falling into a soft landing. That's a relatively bullish scenario for stocks and bonds since it suggests that inflation should continue to moderate around the world allowing the major global central banks to stop tightening their ...

Some of the largest banks in the country– JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup–kicked off the official start to earnings season on Friday with relatively upbeat results and comments from their top managements. All three banks beat earnings expectations for Q2. BlackRock did so as well. In June 2022, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned ...

The following excerpt is from Yardeni Research Morning Briefing (April 26, 2023). We have been on Wall Street as economists and strategists for more than 40 years. Over that entire period, doomsters have been scribbling away, producing lots of articles and books about the US federal deficits and debt. The only pause in their doom and gloom ...

Tomorrow will be May 1. We all know that April showers bring May flowers. There's also an old adage that advises stock investors to go away in May and come back in October. It worked last year, though January was the right month to go away. The first part of this adage often worked. The problem is that the second part has been less ...

Economic growth wasn't as weak as suggested by real GDP which rose only 1.1% (saar) during Q1. During Q4, inventories surged as consumers pivoted from buying goods to purchasing services. Goods producers and providers stopped building unwanted inventories by cutting their orders to their suppliers and by lowering their prices to move their ...

The S&P 500 has been remarkably quiet over the past couple of weeks just below its February 2 high and above both its 50-dma and 200-dma (chart). The earnings season started well with better-than-expected results from the major banks. Investors may be marking time waiting to see if Fed officials will proceed with the widely expected 25bps hike ...

The S&P 500 has been holding up quite well as the the nattering nabobs of negativism beat their drums more loudly. Today's batch of economic indicators gave the bears plenty to growl about. Consider the following: (1) LEI. The Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) peaked at a record high during February 2022 (chart). It's been falling ...

We remain convinced that the S&P 500 bottomed on October 12, 2022. The S&P 500 is up 16.2% since then (table below). Every sector of the S&P 500 is up since then. Even the Financials sector is up 10.3% despite the recent banking crisis. We are still expecting to see the S&P 500 rise to 4600 by the end of this year. However, there could be ...

Could it be that the spike in inflation over the past two years was one of the many shockwaves caused by the pandemic? Is inflation turning out to be relatively transitory after all? Goods inflation is certainly looking transitory (chart). Services inflation has been much more persistent, but is likely to moderate during the second half of ...

The tug of war between the bulls and the bears has been at a standstill recently with the S&P 500 holding above both its 50-dma and 200-dma (chart). That's quite impressive considering the banking crisis that started on March 10 when SVB imploded. Some observers (including us) think that the Fed Put is back. This time the Fed is shoring up ...

The Silicon Valley Bank imploded on Friday, March 10. To avert a widespread bank run, the Fed announced, on Sunday, March 12, that liquidity would be provided by the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP). The Fed's press release stated that this new liquidity facility will offer loans of up to one year in length to financial intermediaries pledging ...

What does the bond market know that the equity market doesn't? The yield on the 10-year Treasury is down from 4.25% on October 24, 2022 to 3.29% today. The S&P 500 is up 8.0% over the same period. Bond investors must believe that the banking crisis will soon morph into a credit crunch and a recession, so inflation will continue to fall ...

Interest rates continued to fall today after Jamie Dimon, who is the President, CEO & Chairman of JP Morgan Chase, warned that the banking crisis is "not yet over" and will cause "repercussions for years to come." He did so in his annual letter to stockholders. With all those titles, he must know what he is talking about. He observed ...

Excerpt from Yardeni Research Morning Briefing (March 28, 2023) Banking I: Disintermediation 2.0? The bear case last year was that the Fed would have to tighten monetary policy aggressively because the Fed was behind the inflation curve and had to scramble to catch up. That would cause a recession, which is the only way to bring inflation ...

The Fed has the banks' backsides covered. The Fed can't insure deposits, but it can guarantee that the banks have access to plenty of liquidity to meet deposit outflows without having to sell securities from their bond portfolios at a loss as happened to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), forcing it into receivership on March 10. The banks are required ...

The ratio of the equal-weighted to market-cap-weighted S&P 500 stock price indexes is an interesting measure of market breadth. It is available daily since 1990 (chart). Based on this limited period, we can see that the ratio tends to rise following recessions and to peak before recessions. It bottoms just before or during recessions.The ...

Bond investors are having fun again. The 10-year US Treasury bond yield peaked last year at 4.25% on October 24. It was down to 3.38% on Friday. Most of this decline occurred since the start of the current banking crisis on March 9 (chart). Bond investors have been waiting for something to break in the financial system since last summer when ...

Stock prices fell after Fed Chair Jerome Powell's press conference today, which was actually relatively dovish. He said that inflation remains too high, but the banking crisis might force the Fed to pause tightening soon. Of greater concern to the stock market was that US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at a congressional hearing ...

The banking crisis might be equivalent to a 100bps hike in the federal funds rate. We are just guessing, but financial conditions have surely tightened a lot as a result of the SVB earthquake and its aftershocks. Further hikes in the federal funds rate are no longer necessary to get it into restrictive territory as Fed officials have been ...

All of a sudden, we are hearing more chatter about deflation. Yes, that's right: deflation. The story line is that the regional banks will respond to the SVB debacle by lending less to lots of middle market businesses, especially if depositors move their funds to the money center banks or to the money markets. The result will be a credit ...

Excerpt from Yardeni Research Morning Briefing (March 8, 2023) The persistently strong demand for labor has surprised everyone from soft landers to hard landers. Fed officials are flummoxed. They've raised the federal fund rate by almost 500bps since early last year to cool labor demand and wage inflation. Yet the labor market remains hot. ...

Did the Fed just guarantee every bank deposit in America? That's really not the Fed's job; it's up to the FDIC to insure deposits up to a maximum of $250,000. By law, the Fed's job is to keep unemployment and inflation down. In addition to its legal "dual mandate," the Fed is ultimately responsible for maintaining financial stability. Our ...

Excerpt from Yardeni Research Morning Briefing (March 8, 2023) Joe Abbott & Ed Yardeni The Q4-2022 earnings season is over. Joe reports that S&P 500 earnings data are out for the quarter. We weren't surprised by the top-line or bottom-line numbers. That's because we follow the weekly data series on forward revenues, forward earnings, and ...

Yesterday's sell-off in the stock market was led by bank stocks. It was mostly triggered by fears that SVB may be the start of a financial crisis that leads to an economy-wide credit crunch and recession. As it has done often in the past, the inverted yield curve has been signaling since last summer that something could break in the ...

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been warning that a recession is coming. Today, ironically, the bank stocks took it on the chin sending the overall stock market lower because the economy is widely deemed to be too strong, and a solid gain is expected in February's payroll employment tomorrow. Furthermore, fears that next Tuesday's CPI ...

"Greed is good" is a catchphrase based on Gordon Gekko's quote "greed, for lack of a better word, is good" from the 1987 film Wall Street. That was the year that Fed Chair Alan Greenspan introduced the "Fed Put" as a way to stop panic selloffs in the stock market. For stock prices to go up, fear is sometimes better than greed. Greed usually ...

Excerpt from Yardeni Research Morning Briefing (February 21, 2023). We think we coined "rolling recession" back in the mid-1980s to describe the economic slowdown that many feared would turn into an economy-wide recession. We think the phrase accurately describes the performance of the US economy since early last year. It's similar to a ...

The stock and bond markets reacted badly to today's stronger-than-expected personal income data and hotter-than-expected PCED. Is the economy experiencing an inflationary no-landing scenario? If so, Fed officials might conclude that the only way to bring inflation down is to push interest rates up until they cause a hard landing. More likely ...

Excerpt from Yardeni Research Morning Briefing (February 13, 2023) Fed officials have indicated that they'd rather see stock and bond prices fall than continue to rise, as they've been doing since October of last year. In their opinion, financial markets' strength has eased financial conditions in the economy, offsetting some of their efforts ...

We aren't that surprised by the 3.0% m/m jump in retail sales reported today. When January's employment data were released, we calculated our Earned Income Proxy for private wages and salaries in personal income (chart). It soared 1.5% m/m as the average workweek jumped 0.9%, payrolls increased 0.3%, and average hourly earnings rose 0.3%. ...

Over the past 12 months through January, the federal budget deficit totaled "only" $1.6 trillion. That's down from over $4.0 trillion during the pandemic, but it has been widening again in recent months (chart). The bond market rarely reacts to the Treasury's monthly deficit release. That's remarkable considering that the Fed stopped buying ...

Excerpt from Yardeni Research Morning Briefing (February 9, 2023) This week, both Microsoft and Google made announcements touting their artificial intelligence (AI) prowess and plans as they battle to dominate the nascent AI niche, which some believe will be as important as the iPhone or cloud computing. Of course, they’re not alone. ...

We warned you that they would be back soon. The FOMC's blackout period ended last Thursday. Fed officials have been squawking like hawks again since Friday. They are all sending more or less the same message. They are aiming to continue to hike the federal funds rate in 25bps increments a couple more times to 5.00%-5.25%. That should ...

Fed Chair Jerome Powell isn't likely to upset the financial markets tomorrow if he says what he said at his press conference last week. The word "disinflation" was uttered 11 times at Powell's presser on February 1. He was the only one who mentioned the word at his presser. He repeatedly acknowledged that inflation was moderating but still had ...