United States
The US Retail Sales report painted a resilient picture of American consumers in April. Although the 0.4% m/m increase in overall retail sales fell below consensus estimates of a 0.8% m/m rise, the details of the report surprised to the upside. In particular,…
The S&P 500 Industrials index has gained 19% since its October 2022 lows and outperformed the S&P 500 gains of 15%. The sector has benefitted from American companies' efforts to "onshore" supply chains, but the deteriorating global industrial cycle…
The New York Fed’s Empire State Survey sent a pessimistic signal about US manufacturing conditions in May. The headline index plunged by 42.6 points to -31.8 – the largest monthly decline since April 2020 and below expectations of a milder decrease to -3.9.…
After a period of significant underperformance in 2022, US Growth stocks are regaining lost ground vis-à-vis Value. The S&P 500 Growth index has outperformed its Value counterpart by 7 percentage points since the start of the year. Notably, most of…
The US banking system remains unsettled over two months after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank. The two weeks following regulators’ seizure of First Republic (FRC) have featured dizzying swings in the stock prices of several regional banks as investors…
The conventional economic thinking about the likely impact of AI is misguided because it extrapolates linearly from what AI can do today to what it can do tomorrow. Just as the investment community and the broader public were blindsided by the exponential rise in Covid cases during the early days of the pandemic, they will be blindsided by how quickly AI transforms society and the economy.
Preliminary results from the University of Michigan survey show consumer sentiment relapsed in May. The headline index plunged from 63.5 to a six-month low of 57.7 – below expectations of a marginal decrease to 63.0. Declines in both the current conditions as…
According to BCA Research’s Global Investment Strategy service, AI’s progression is following an exponential curve, not a linear one, meaning that advances could come much faster than expected. If humanity survives the transition to superintelligent AI,…
Our colleagues in BCA’s Commodity & Energy Service believe the US banking crisis is part and parcel of the fallout from the Fed’s shift to aggressive policy tightening undertaken last year when it realized inflation was not transitory. The…
According to BCA Research’s Counterpoint service, on a timeframe of two years, investors should shock-proof their portfolios by holding some combination of cheap insurance assets. All shocks end up with both deflationary and inflationary components: either…