United States
Preliminary results from the University of Michigan survey show consumer sentiment relapsed in May. The headline index plunged from 63.5 to a six-month low of 57.7 – below expectations of a marginal decrease to 63.0. Declines in both the current conditions as…
According to BCA Research’s Global Investment Strategy service, AI’s progression is following an exponential curve, not a linear one, meaning that advances could come much faster than expected. If humanity survives the transition to superintelligent AI,…
Our colleagues in BCA’s Commodity & Energy Service believe the US banking crisis is part and parcel of the fallout from the Fed’s shift to aggressive policy tightening undertaken last year when it realized inflation was not transitory. The…
According to BCA Research’s Counterpoint service, on a timeframe of two years, investors should shock-proof their portfolios by holding some combination of cheap insurance assets. All shocks end up with both deflationary and inflationary components: either…
The crisis hitting regional and local banks in the US is adding to oil-price volatility and gold demand. The crisis arguably is fallout from the Fed’s aggressive monetary policy tightening, and contributes to the upending economic relationships that reliably informed policy, investments and forecasts in the past. This feeds into higher price volatility, which reduces liquidity in the short run, and impedes capex in the long run, which limits future supply growth.
As expected, annual core CPI inflation slowed from 5.6% y/y to 5.5% y/y in April. Meanwhile, the month-on-month figure was broadly unchanged at 0.4% m/m. A look at the details of the report through the lens of the Fed’s breakdown of core inflation into core…
Workers who switch jobs typically experience faster wage growth than those who do not change jobs. Data from the Atlanta Fed’s wage growth tracker shows that the GFC is the only period on record of faster wage growth for Job Stayers than Job Switchers. The…
After a decade of underperforming palladium, platinum prices have started regaining lost ground. While palladium prices have declined by 27% since the end of Q3, platinum prices are up 28%. Multiple forces are at play. Both metals are used in catalytic…
The turmoil within the US regional banks over the past two months has resulted in a notable, and widening, divergence in the performance of US and European bank shares. Since the beginning of March, just before the problems with Silicon Valley Bank become…
April’s CPI report was soft enough to justify a Fed pause in June. However, the overall economic data still don’t justify the magnitude of rate cuts priced into the yield curve.