Consumer
An adverse shock is not a recession prerequisite. The empirical record shows that the US economy regularly evolves its way into a contraction with little fanfare. If current cooling trends continue, we project a recession will begin in late 2024/early 2025. …
Several economic releases out of China disappointed in April. Retail sales decelerated from 3.1% y/y to 2.3% y/y and fixed asset investment growth slowed from 4.5% YTD y/y to 4.2% YTD y/y. Both were expected to accelerate. Although industrial production…
US retail sales remained unchanged in April, a downside surprise from expectations of 0.4% m/m growth. Notably, the retail sales control group (an input to GDP) declined by 0.3% m/m despite expectations of mild growth and all of the March figures were revised…
On the surface, the Tuesday release of the NFIB Small Business Survey indicated resilience among small businesses. The headline index appreciated to 89.7 from 88.5, upending expectations of a moderation to 88.2. However, the marginal improvement has not…
Despite historically high interest rates and the fact that variable-rate mortgage issuances dominate the mortgage market landscape, Australian home prices continue to climb at a close to double-digit annual rate. The Core Logic House Price index is now…
Emergency pandemic policies elongated the lag between Fed rate hikes and an observable slowdown in the economy. Notably, fiscal transfers and constrained consumption options endowed households with more than $2 trillion of savings they would not otherwise…
Chinese aggregate financing, a broad measure of credit, declined on a YTD basis, from CNY 12.9tr to CNY 12.7tr in April, disappointing expectations that it would grow to CNY 13.9tr. Moreover, new loan growth missed expectations (from CNY 9.5tr to CNY 10.2tr)…
We marked the first X on our Equity Downgrade Checklist and the latest JOLTS, Employment Situation and SLOOS releases brought us closer to ticking some others. We remain tactically neutral on equities but expect that we will underweight them as excess savings are further depleted, leading labor market indicators continue to soften and consumer credit performance continues to fray.
In a widely expected move, the Bank of England (BoE) maintained its policy rate at 5.25% in May. Nevertheless, two Committee Members voted in favor of cutting rates, one more than was anticipated. The tone of the report was overall dovish. The BoE…
Mexico’s election and the US election pose short-term and potentially medium-term risks to Mexican financial assets. But unless the ruling party wins a double supermajority, we remain structurally overweight Mexico relative to global stocks excluding the United States.