Business Cycles
At 3.9% in February, the unemployment rate remains quite low in the US, corroborating the signal from GDP that current economic conditions are fine. Similarly, the Sahm Rule – which currently stands at 0.3 pp – has somewhat stabilized in recent months and has…
The recent rally in commodity markets is drawing the attention of the investment community and financial media. It’s not just cocoa – which has experienced a staggering 118.4% year to date increase that has further pushed up its price gains to 342% since…
Investors around Europe and North America are concerned that the stock market is increasingly overbought and vulnerable to exogenous risks. We agree and have good reasons to fear that festering geopolitical risks and the US election season will deal negative surprises.
Chinese industrial profit growth surged to 10.2% y/y in the first two months of the year after having contracted by 2.3% in 2023. Does this rebound in profits suggest that investors should become more optimistic about the Chinese economy and risk assets? A…
In an Insight we published yesterday, we highlighted that the S&P 500 rally has recently stopped narrowing with the gap between the market cap-weighted and equal-weighted indices stabilizing over the past month. This has also coincided with a…
The Conference Board’s gauge of US consumer confidence came in at 104.7 in March – broadly unchanged from a downwardly revised 104.8 in February and below expectations of an improvement to 107. The Expectations Index deteriorated from 76.3 to 73.8, while…
The US equity rally has recently stopped narrowing with the gap between the market cap-weighted and equal-weighted indices for the S&P 500 stabilizing over the past month. Indeed, this has coincided with a shift in market leadership. Energy, Materials,…
According to BCA Research’s Global Investment Strategy service, the wave of inflation that the US experienced over the past three years cannot be safely repeated. The unemployment rate is a highly mean-reverting series: When it gets down to very low…
GAI is a powerful force that will revolutionize the global economy and we are sold on this long-term investment theme. To partake in the upward momentum, we recommend a nuanced approach. The GAI infrastructure cohort is now overbought - there should be a better entry point. The models and applications companies and early adopters are less of a crowded trade and offer more opportunities.
Both supply- and demand-side forces contributed to the inflation surge in 2021/2022. According to the San Francisco Fed’s estimates, the contribution of demand-side forces to annual core PCE inflation jumped from -0.09 percentage points (pp) in February 2021…