Paid The Economic Week Ahead: April 1 - 5 Mar 31, 2024 2 min read paid The first week of the month is always jampacked with economic indicators. In addition, at least one member of the Federal Open Mouth Committee will be speaking every day. The economic indicators should confirm that the economy remains resilient in the face of pockets of weakness (a.k.a., rolling recessions). For starters, we'll see if the ISM's March M-PMI (Mon) confirms the weakness in the Ed Yardeni
Paid Market Call: Fed Choir All On Same Page Mar 31, 2024 2 min read paid Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke on Friday at an event at the San Francisco Fed. He repeated what other Fed officials have been saying recently. Solid economic growth gives the Fed "the chance to just be a little more confident about inflation coming down before we take the important step of cutting rates." Inflation continues to moderate on a "sometimes bumpy" path. So there's Ed Yardeni
Paid DEEP DIVE: The Fed Put Is Back Mar 30, 2024 6 min read paid Monetary Policy I: Post-Modern Monetary Theory Melissa and I received quite a few favorable reader comments on last Monday’s Morning Briefing discussing our “Post-Modern Monetary Theory” (P-MMT). Many of the comments included thought-provoking queries about our P-MMT, which I address below. In addition, the Financial Times is running my summary of our theory in an op-ed titled “The Fed should resist messing with success.” The basic concept of P-MMT Ed Yardeni
Public Dr Ed's Market Calls .... as reported in the financial press Mar 30, 2024 1 min read We are often asked about our track record in predicting the economy and financial markets. In response, we've compiled a handy chronological list of links to articles in the financial press that have reported on our predictions. We thank those of you have signed up for a full membership to our QuickTakes. You can find a discussion of our "current analysis" approach to forecasting in Dr. Ed Yardeni
Public Sweet Economic Indicators Mar 28, 2024 2 min read Today's batch of economic indicators was mostly sweet. Q4's real GDP was revised from 3.2% to 3.4% (chart). The Atlanta Fed GDPNow model is projecting 2.1% for Q1-2024. Consumer spending was revised up from 3.0% to 3.3% despite fears that it would be depressed by the resumption of student loan payments. We disputed that notion by observing that real wages and Ed Yardeni
Paid 'There's Still No Rush' Mar 27, 2024 2 min read paid So said Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller this evening at the Economic Club of New York in a speech titled “There’s Still No Rush.” He noted that the latest inflation figures were "disappointing" and that the economy and labor market remain strong. So, in his opinion, "it is appropriate to reduce the overall number of rate cuts or push them further into the future in response Ed Yardeni
Paid Dr Ed's Video Webcast 3/27/24 Mar 27, 2024 1 min read paid Is the “Fed Put” back? Might the Fed’s assurances that interest rates will be brought down this year (as long as inflation behaves as expected) fuel irrational exuberance among investors? And what if interest rates really don’t need to come down, because the notion that they do rests on a faulty premise—the “long and variable lag” thesis? Our Post-Modern Monetary Theory suggests that monetary tightening doesn’t Ed Yardeni
Paid Performance Derby Mar 25, 2024 2 min read paid The stock market rally should continue to broaden as investors realize that the MegaCap-8 are not bulletproof. Tesla has competitors such as China's BYD , which on Monday lowered the starting price of its Seal electric sedan to just under $25,000. Last week, on Thursday, the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. Also recently, US antitrust officials filed antimonopoly lawsuits against Amazon, Google and Meta Platforms. Ed Yardeni
Paid Market Call: The Fed Put Is Back Mar 24, 2024 2 min read paid Last week, the FOMC released its latest quarterly Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) for March. Compared to December's SEP, the committee's participants raised their 2024 median forecasts for real GDP (from 1.4% to 2.1%) and for the core PCED inflation rate (from 2.4% to 2.6%). Their median forecast for the unemployment rate was lowered a bit from 4.1% to 4.0% Ed Yardeni
Paid The Economic Week Ahead: March 25 - 29 Mar 24, 2024 2 min read paid The most important economic indicator for the week ahead will be February's PCED inflation rate, which comes out on Friday. The Cleveland Fed's Inflation Nowcast shows the headline and core rates rising 0.4% and 0.3% m/m, and 2.5% and 2.8% y/y. Those results would be about the same as January's, possibly raising concerns that inflation has stalled and Ed Yardeni
Paid DEEP DIVE: The Fed In A Presidential Election Year Mar 23, 2024 3 min read paid Notwithstanding last week’s hotter-than-expected CPI and PPI reports, the financial markets are still anticipating that the Federal Reserve will cut the federal funds rate three times over the next 12 months. On Friday, the nearby federal funds rate futures was 5.33%, while the 12-month futures was 4.47% (Fig. 1 below). That 86-basis-point spread implies that investors expect at least three cuts of 25 basis points each by Ed Yardeni