Economy
The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index (LEI) fell by 1.0% m/m in December, following a 1.1% m/m drop in the prior month and below consensus expectations of a 0.7% decline. Non-financial variables led the December decline, particularly gauges of demand…
Preliminary estimates indicate that Eurozone consumer confidence improved in January. The European Commission measure ticked up to -20.9 from -22, corroborating several other indicators pointing to recovering sentiment among businesses and investors. …
US homebuilder stocks have been steadily outperforming in recent months, up 29% since the S&P 500’s October 12 bottom – 18 percentage points above the benchmark index. The nearly 100bp decline in the 30-year mortgage rate since early November,…
BCA Research’s US Investment Strategy service concludes that the biggest banks’ earnings commentary supports the team’s sanguine near-term view. Despite some fraying at the lowest end of the income and wealth distributions, consumers continue to hold deposit…
Global investors should sell Chinese assets on strength this year and diversify into other emerging markets. American investors should limit China exposure. Short CNY-USD.
Our latest edition of the Big Bank Beige Book suggests that households, businesses and banks are in unusually good shape ahead of a recession.
European assets have enjoyed a stunning outperformance since October 2022. Can these strong returns last in 2023?
The volume of retail sales in the UK unexpectedly declined by 1.0% m/m (5.8% y/y) in December, disappointing expectations it would rebound following November’s 0.5% m/m contraction. Lower sales of cosmetics, sports equipment, toys, watches & jewelry, and…
BCA’s Global Leading Economic Indicator – a GDP weighed average of the standardized leading indicators of 23 DM and EM economies – has been steadily deteriorating since early-2021. To the extent that this indicator is designed to provide a 6- to 12-month…
In <b><i>Part I</b></i> of a long-term series on currency valuations, we show that a simple PPP model has a good track record of predicting long-term currency returns (over 3-to-5 years).