Economy
The Bank of Japan’s Economy Watchers Survey – a gauge of sentiment among business owners – disappointed in April. The Current Conditions and the Outlook indices deteriorated from 49.8 to 47.4 (20-month low) and from 51.2 to 48.5 (16-month low), below…
Emergency pandemic policies elongated the lag between Fed rate hikes and an observable slowdown in the economy. Notably, fiscal transfers and constrained consumption options endowed households with more than $2 trillion of savings they would not otherwise…
The US Citi Economic Surprise Index has recently dipped below zero, indicating that US economic data releases have been disappointing expectations. Most notably, the ISM Services PMI started contracting in April against anticipation of a faster pace of…
We marked the first X on our Equity Downgrade Checklist and the latest JOLTS, Employment Situation and SLOOS releases brought us closer to ticking some others. We remain tactically neutral on equities but expect that we will underweight them as excess savings are further depleted, leading labor market indicators continue to soften and consumer credit performance continues to fray.
German Bunds have cheapened considerably, and the ECB is about to start cutting rates. Does this combination guarantee immediate profits from buying these bonds?
The Canadian economy added 90.4 thousand jobs in April, up from a new loss of 2.2 thousand jobs in March. The April reading beat expectations of a more moderate increase of 20 thousand. The services sector entirely explains April’s employment growth; services…
Preliminary GDP estimates suggest that the UK economy started growing again in Q1, thus exiting a technical recession in the past two quarters. Q1 growth came in at 0.6%, improving from a 0.3% contraction last quarter, surpassing expectations of 0.4%. On a…
The idea that rising interest rates benefit value at the expense of growth has become consensus amongst market participants. The rationale is simple: Most of the cashflow that shareholders will receive from growth stocks are farther into the future than…
Upward growth revisions for China and India have led the IMF to recently upgrade its 2024 growth forecast for Asia to 4.5% from 4.2%. The regional growth forecast for 2025 remains unchanged at 4.3%. The IMF now expects the Chinese economy to grow at a 4.6%…
US initial jobless claims increased from 209 thousand last week to 231 thousand, surpassing expectations of 212 thousand. Moreover, continuing claims also surprised to the upside, increasing from 1.768 million to 1.785 million. Nearly half of the rise in…