Optimism among investors and economic agents continues to improve in the Eurozone. The Sentix Economic Index for the Eurozone rose from -16.8 to -15.8 in January – in line with consensus expectations and marking the third…
Our Portfolio Allocation Summary for January 2024.
Despite the blah opening to the year, we do not think stocks have reached an inflection point. We expect that incoming data will continue to flatter the soft-landing narrative for another couple of months, helping the S&P 500 to…
At first blush, the US establishment survey delivered a positive surprise on Friday. The increase in US nonfarm payroll employment jumped from 173 thousand to 216 thousand in December – beating expectations of 175 thousand…
Following today’s US jobs data release, the Joshi rule real-time US recession indicator inched up to 0.18 and is now just a whisker from its recession event-horizon of 0.20.
The market is pricing in that the Fed will cut rates by around 175 BPs this year, with the first rate cut coming as early as March. We think it unlikely that the Fed will cut that quickly – unless a deterioration in the…
The attacks on Red Sea commercial tankers by Iran’s Yemeni proxies, the Houthi movement, are an inflation risk inasmuch as they lengthen voyage times for any shipping forced to avoid the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The risk of an expansion…
According to BCA Research’s European Investment Strategy service, the euro has ample attractive features that justify a positive long-term outlook. However, its pro-cyclicality and the dollar’s negative…
Minutes from the Fed’s December 12-13 FOMC meeting suggest that policymakers are more confident that inflation is on track to return to target. While they continued to note that inflation remains elevated and that they are…
Results of the November JOLTS survey indicate that the US labor market is softening. The number of job openings slowed from 8.85 million to 8.79 million – the lowest since March 2021 and slightly below expectations of 8.…