Inflation/Deflation
The US ISM manufacturing PMI release for February disappointed consensus expectations. The headline index relapsed to 47.8 after climbing to a 15-month high of 49.1 in January, falling below expectations of a continued slowdown in the pace of contraction to…
The preliminary Eurozone inflation release suggests that price pressures eased by less than anticipated in February. Headline CPI inflation slowed from 2.8% y/y to 2.6% y/y (slightly above expectations of 2.5% y/y. Similarly, although the core inflation gauge…
Amid patchy global growth, the US economy remains resilient. However, tight monetary policy will eventually trigger a recession in the US too. The stock market rally has been very narrow. Stay underweight risk assets.
Despite the economy being on the verge of a recession, the South African Reserve Bank will not ease policy meaningfully. Doing so will accentuate the currency depreciation, which, in turn, will push up bond yields – an outcome the central bank would like to prevent.
Aside from the 1.0% m/m jump in personal income – which beat expectations of a 0.4% m/m rise – the US January Personal Income and Outlays report was broadly in line with consensus estimates. Nominal personal spending growth decelerated from 0.7% m/m to 0.2%…
New Zealand government bonds rallied, and the NZD was the worst performing major currency on Wednesday following the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s (RBNZ) policy announcement. Although the central bank’s decision to keep its official cash rate (OCR) unchanged…
Earlier this year it looked like the spread between the rate of 10-year and 2-year Treasury notes was heading toward positive territory. Yet the 2s/10s spread peaked at -16 bps on January 16 and the inversion has been deepening since. This peak in the yield…
The FTSE 250 has been outperforming the FTSE 100 since late October 2023, with the former gaining 13.7% versus 3.9% in the case of the latter over this period. To the extent that UK small cap stocks are more exposed to domestic economic dynamics than…
The first in a series of Strategy Insights where we present a checklist for extending duration in each major government bond market. This first entry focuses on the US.
The messaging from the minutes of the ECB’s January meeting was similar to the Fed. Although Governing Council members noted that “for the first time in many meetings, the risks to reaching the inflation target were seen as broadly balanced or at least…