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The Economic Week Ahead: April 21 - 26

Apr 21, 2024 2 min read paid

This will be a big week for S&P 500 earnings. Fed officials are in their blackout period until Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaks at his May 1 press conference following the next meeting of the "Federal Open Mouth Committee." On the economic front, the big fireworks will occur at the end of the week: (1) Q1's real GDP (Thu) should show an increase of

Ed Yardeni

DEEP DIVE: Inflation: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Apr 20, 2024 7 min read paid

Inflation I: The Good Obviously, the outlook for inflation matters greatly to determining Fed policymaking and the course of the economy. Let’s have a closer look at the latest inflation data to identify the good, the bad, and the ugly: (1) CPI excluding shelter. Debbie and I are encouraged to see that the headline and core CPI inflation rates excluding shelter were only 2.3% y/y (versus 3.

Ed Yardeni

Monetary Policy Is In A 'Good Place'

Apr 18, 2024 2 min read paid

Ed Yardeni

Tanks A Lot

Apr 17, 2024 2 min read paid

The war premium in the crude oil market fell again today. Fears of a significant disruption to global oil production continued to dissipate this week. That's even though Israel has threatened to attack Iran in response to the aerial attack launched by Iran against Israel on Saturday. The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil peaked recently at $91.17 0n April 5 (chart). It was down

Ed Yardeni

Dr Ed's Video Webcast 4/17/24

Apr 17, 2024 1 min read paid

As the war in the Middle East escalates, it could send the oil price flying toward $100 per barrel and wipe out our expectations of continued moderation in US inflation (notwithstanding March’s anomalous CPI). … Barring that ugly scenario, our inflation outlook is good, with continued moderation to the Fed’s 2.0% target—which, notably, we wouldn’t view as justifying Fed easing this year. … But there are flies

Ed Yardeni

Hawks Fly Higher For Longer Than Doves

Apr 16, 2024 2 min read paid

It's official: Fed Chair Jerome Powell confirmed today that he and his colleagues aren't convinced that inflation is coming down fast enough to consider cutting the federal funds rate (FFR) any time soon: "The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence and instead indicate that it is likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence," Powell said at a moderated

Ed Yardeni

No Landing

Apr 15, 2024 2 min read paid

Ed Yardeni

Market Call: The Winds Of War

Apr 14, 2024 2 min read paid

The S&P 500 is down 2.5% from its record high of 5254.35 on March 29 (chart). Its 1.5% drop on Friday was widely attributed to disappointing earnings reports from the big banks that day. Undoubtedly, the market also reacted to warnings from the White House that Iran would attack Israel within a couple of days, which happened Saturday afternoon EST. The S&P 500

Ed Yardeni

The Economic Week Ahead: April 15 - 19

Apr 14, 2024 2 min read paid

Following Iran's attack on Israel Saturday, geopolitics should dominate this week's market action. The Q1 earnings reporting season will also merit investors' attention. In addition, Fed officials are likely to chatter about whether any rate cuts are likely this year given last week's hotter-than-expected March CPI. And there are plenty of economic reports coming out this week. They are likely to show that

Ed Yardeni

The Spreading War In The Middle East

Apr 12, 2024 3 min read

Ever since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, we've warned that the latest war in the Middle East between these arch enemies could be protracted and spread to the rest of the region. On October 10, we wrote: "This one isn’t likely to lead to a quick ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as occurred in the past, because it is in fact a war between

Ed Yardeni

PPI Not As Hot As CPI

Apr 11, 2024 2 min read paid

Today's PPI report threw some cold water on yesterday's hotter-than-expected CPI. Our opinion is that the Fed won't be lowering interest rates this year because the economy and labor market will remain strong. Yesterday's CPI confirmed our conclusion based on the wrong premise. We aren't expecting inflation to get stuck above the Fed's 2.0% target. We think

Ed Yardeni

The Last Mile

Apr 10, 2024 3 min read paid

Will the Fed start raising the federal funds rate again? We expect to be hearing this question more often following today's hotter-than-expected CPI inflation report. The previous two reports for January and February were also hotter-than-expected. We don't think that the Fed will raise rates again this year, but we've pushed back against the widely-held notion of several cuts this year and argued that

Ed Yardeni