Recession-Hard/Soft Landing
As expected, the New York Fed’s Empire State Survey sent a pessimistic signal about manufacturing conditions in October. The general business conditions index weakened from 1.9 to -4.6, albeit better than expectations of a more pronounced decline to -6.0.…
Results of the Banks of Canada’s Q3 business and consumer surveys reveal that the aggressive tightening cycle is dampening economic agents’ sentiment. Putting aside the sharp decline at the onset of the pandemic in Q2 2020, the Business Outlook Survey (BOS)…
US financial conditions have tightened meaningfully in Q3. While the Goldman Sachs index remains below where it was a year ago, it crossed above the 100 line in late September into restrictive levels after spending most of the year in accommodative territory.…
The preliminary release of the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment survey delivered a negative surprise on Friday. A bigger-than-anticipated drop pushed the headline sentiment index down to a five-month low of 63. Weaker-than-expected assessments of…
Back in May, our foreign exchange team suggested the risk to sterling was to the downside. Indeed, GBP/USD is down 8% from its recent peak. While dollar strength largely explains this move in GBP/USD, there have been other fundamental factors at play. The…
The US CPI report shows inflation was higher than anticipated in September. Although the headline index decelerated from 0.6% m/m to 0.4% m/m, it is above expectations of 0.3% m/m. The annual rate of change remains at 3.7% y/y – also above consensus estimates…
As expected, the UK economy bounced back in August with GDP expanding by 0.2% m/m following a 0.6% m/m decline in July. Yet to the extent that this improvement largely reflects a rebound after strikes weighed down on activity in the prior month, the growth…
The last few weeks saw a repricing of nominal yields to levels not breached since before the Great Financial Crisis. Breaking down the US 10-year Treasury yield into real and inflation expectations components reveals the selloff was mostly driven by the…
According to BCA Research’s Counterpoint service, the sharp sell-off in long duration bonds (ticker TLT) has reached the collapsed 130-day complexity that has preceded several turning-points in the last few years. This suggests a two-thirds probability of a…
US monetary policy is restrictive, as evidenced by a falling jobs-workers gap. The reason that unemployment has not risen is because labor demand still exceeds supply. That will change in the second half of 2024 when the US economy succumbs to recession. Investors should increasingly favor bonds over stocks.