While the Fed’s dots dovishly surprised, the FOMC’s output and inflation projections were on the hawkish side. Adding the committee’s core PCE price inflation estimate for 2021 to their real GDP forecast results in a…
The pandemic-induced recession surely did hurt earnings, but it also served as a wakeup call to corporate executives as they scrambled to boost business efficiencies. The chart below is showing our proxy (using equally weighted…
Highlights The American Rescue Plan Act confirms the shift to “Big Government” and proactive fiscal policy in US politics. This sea change in policy is durable for now, given that Democrats can pass one or two more budget…
Deterioration in Chinese data pushed us to downgrade the cyclical/defensive portfolio bent from overweight to neutral last month (third panel), and today we highlight yet another warning shot originating across the Pacific…
Overweight The inevitable economic reopening due to the population’s inoculation along with President Biden's freshly signed fiscal spending bill will pump fresh blood into the US economy that railroads –…
Highlights Duration: The Fed will revise up its interest rate forecasts at this week’s meeting, but the new forecasts will remain dovish compared to current market pricing. This could pressure bond yields down in the near-term.…
Highlights Portfolio Strategy Firming leading rail freight indicators signal that intermodal, coal and commodity (ex-coal) carloads are in high demand. Tack on the global economic reopening in the back half of the year and rising…
Today we take a deep dive into the S&P 500’s seasonality patterns. While over the last two decades Q1 has been the weakest quarter for stocks, on average, with March registering the steepest losses, using reconstructed S&P…
Highlights The Biden administration’s early actions suggest it will be hawkish on China as expected – and the giant Microsoft hack merely confirms the difficulty of reducing strategic tensions. US-China talks are set to…
In recent research we have highlighted the intricate relationship between stocks and bonds and how a selloff in the latter can cause some consternation in the SPX (please see Charts 7 and 9A here). Today we take a closer…