Recent inflation readings have firmed up, although remain subdued historically. As have inflation expectations. What happens with crude oil, which rallied big the past couple of years, is worth watching. Later today, the FOMC concludes its two-day meeting – the … Continued
Gold is hammering on crucial resistance. This has been going on for a while now. A breakout will happen – sooner or later. Kudos to the gold bugs, they are at it again. Once again, they are hammering on resistance … Continued
How times have changed? It did not take long for markets’ attention to do a 360 from fears of deflation to that of inflation. January’s consumer price index was reported Wednesday. It was stronger than expected. In the 12 months … Continued
Following futures positions of non-commercials are as of January 30, 2018. 10-year note: Currently net short 215.6k, up 97.7k. Last week, the futures-market odds of a 25-basis-point hike in the March (20-21) meeting in the fed funds rate stood at … Continued
Of late, the U.S. dollar has defied expectations. Since peaking at 103.82 early January last year through Thursday’s intraday low, the US dollar index (89.23) dropped 15 percent. This was a period in which U.S. economic fundamentals have been decent … Continued
Thanks to faster growth in the second half last year, inventory is getting wrung out of the system. It is probably only a matter of time accumulation occurs again. In 3Q17, U.S. real GDP grew at an annual rate of … Continued
The usual middle-of-the-road approach. Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen’s Humphrey Hawkins testimony to the Senate yesterday, that is. (She appears before the House later today.) There were no hints as to if she was ready to vote for a rate … Continued
The latest productivity report had observers buzzing more about unit labor costs than output per hour. In 4Q16, unit labor costs jumped at an annual rate of 1.68 percent, up from 0.18 percent in 3Q16. This comes in the wake … Continued
Regardless whether or not it is solely related to the outcome of the November 8 U.S. presidential election, several data points have seen an uptick since. Stocks rallied, with the S&P 500 large cap index up nearly six percent between … Continued
The last time average hourly earnings of U.S. private-sector employees grew with a three handle was April 2009 … means in the current recovery wages are yet to print growth of three percent. December came close, with a year-over-year increase … Continued