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Policy

Our latest views on the recent increase in Treasury yields and some key things to watch at next week’s FOMC meeting.

The UK labor market remains far too tight to expect wage growth to slow to levels consistent with the Bank of England inflation target. A true recession with rising unemployment is needed to finally slay the UK inflation beast. 2024 rate cuts are off the table, with the central bank having to keep monetary policy tighter for longer than markets expect and the UK economy now rebounding. We recommend downgrading UK gilts to underweight in global bond portfolios, while also looking for opportunities to buy the British pound on pullbacks versus the euro, Canadian dollar and Swedish krona.

The advanced estimates for US real GDP suggest that economic growth slowed meaningfully from 3.4% in Q4 2023 to 1.6% in Q1 2024 on an annualized basis, significantly below expectations of 2.5%. That said, the details of the report were less gloomy. While…
Throughout this cycle, US housing has defied expectations. Overall home prices have never fallen since the pandemic, even as the Fed has conducted its second most aggressive tightening campaign in history. Today, home price growth remains robust, running at…
Tuesday’s Australian inflation release came in hotter than anticipated. Quarter-on-quarter headline inflation increased from 0.6% in Q4 2023 to 1% in the first quarter of this year, above expectations of 0.8%. Although annual inflation declined from 4.1% to…
Results of Germany’s IFO business climate survey for April sent a positive message on Tuesday. The overall Business Climate Index increased from 87.9 to 89.4, beating expectations of 88.9. Assessments of both the current business situation (increased from…

The disinflation process is over in Poland and Hungary. Only the Czech Republic will see its core inflation meet its central bank target this year. The reason is much tighter labor market dynamics in the first two. Investors should continue to short a basket of CE3 currencies vis-à-vis the US dollar.

Preliminary S&P PMIs for the US showed the manufacturing index declined to contraction territory of 49.9 from 51.9, falling short of expectations of 52. The services PMI also disappointed coming in at 50.9, versus expectations it would improve from 51.7…
Retail gasoline prices have surged 13% since the beginning of the year, boosted by resilient global demand and geopolitical tensions. A key question for investors pertains to the ability of US consumption to sustain further gasoline price increases.…
Flash estimates for several European PMIs were released Tuesday. The results for manufacturing activity were somewhat disappointing. The German manufacturing PMI increased from 41.9 to 42.2, but underperformed expectations of 42.7. France’s manufacturing…