Business Cycles
BCA Research’s US Investment Strategy service remains tactically neutral with a defensive cyclical bias. The team is resisting the impulse to turn prematurely defensive ahead of the coming recession. Our colleagues believe that fleeing for the hills at…
The Bank of Canada (BoC) cut interest rates from 5% to 4.75% in June and another rate cut in July would be warranted. Tight monetary policy is impacting the labor market. The unemployment rate (6.1%) has been on an uptrend since April 2023 and surging…
The Conference Board’s US Leading Economic Index (LEI) disappointed in May, contracting 0.5% m/m from a 0.6% decline in April. However, the Coincident Economic Index (CEI) grew 0.4% m/m in May. Year-on-year contractions in the LEI have reliably predicted…
Gold spot prices have returned a whopping 25% YTD, with the bulk of this performance having occurred in the last three months. Interestingly, these gains have occurred despite the rise in real yields, with which they are usually strongly inversely…
Japanese exports in JPY increased from 8.3% y/y to 13.5% in May, surpassing expectations of 12.7%. 23.9% and 17.8% y/y growth in exports to the US and China, respectively, led the overall surge. Trade data from Asian export-oriented economies are generally…
In its latest Special Report, BCA Research’s US Bond Strategy service considers the relative merits of four different fixed income investments in the current economic environment: 2-year Treasuries, 10-year Treasuries, Baa-rated corporate bonds and current…
US retail sales were mostly unchanged, growing by a mere 0.1% m/m in May, short of the expected 0.3% monthly increase. A 2.2% m/m decline in gasoline stations’ sales weighed on the overall result, though retail sales excluding autos and gas disappointed by an…
Chinese retail sales grew 3.7% y/y in May, from 2.3% in April, upending expectations of a more muted 3.0% increase. The government appliance trade-in program has likely boosted these figures. Sales of home-related goods such as communication appliances,…
The Eurozone Sentix Economic index improved from -3.6 to 0.3 in June, easily surpassing expectations of a more muted improvement to -1.7. Notably, the Expectation and Current Situation subindices rose to 28-month and 13-month highs of 10 and -9, respectively.…
The redeployment of pandemic-era excess savings has been a significant driver of US consumption growth and helped the economy avoid a recession last year. Although pandemic-era fiscal support was less generous in China, households nevertheless accumulated CNY…