Money/Credit/Debt

Europe’s weak patch is not about the ECB’s policy tightening, at least not yet. 2024 is another story, and the ECB’s policy will prompt a Eurozone’s recession around the summer.

The biggest banks report that consumer credit card delinquencies still have yet to get back to pre-COVID levels and other credit performance indicators, leading and lagging, remain solid. There is still a great deal of cash sloshing around the banking system, though consumption has clearly slowed. We reiterate our view that a recession is coming, but not before the year is out.

The Hamas attack against Israel, timed almost 50 years to the day after a similar surprise attack on Yom Kippur of 1973, has evoked parallels with the 1970s. Parallels not only with Middle Eastern geopolitics then and now, but also with inflation, economics, and financial markets. In this report, we explain what went wrong in the 1970s and whether the mistakes will be repeated. Plus: the sharp sell-offs in some Latin American currencies are reaching a potential turning-point.

More equity volatility is coming in the short run. Trump’s nomination looks to be smooth, which marginally reduces the incumbent party advantage and increases policy uncertainty.

The sharp sell-off in long duration bonds (ticker TLT) has reached the collapsed 130-day complexity that implies a probable and playable rebound. More strategically, long-duration bonds yielding close to 5 percent are an excellent structural investment assuming central banks choose to slay inflation and the cost is a near-term recession. We discuss how to time and how to play the potential rebound.

We unveil the ‘Joshi rule’ real-time recession indicator as a much better version of the Federal Reserve’s own ‘Sahm rule’. And we identify what would trigger these recession indicators in this week’s and future US jobs reports. Plus: airlines, soybeans, and tin are all good rebound candidates based on their collapsed short-term complexities.