Yardeni QuickTakes (Page 72)

The Economic Week Ahead: June 17-21

Jun 16, 2024 3 min read paid

The economic week ahead will include lots of economic indicators, which on balance should show that the pace of economic activity improved during May. June's regional business surveys for the New York and Philly Fed districts will also be released. The BIG number should be initial unemployment claims. Here's our take: (1) Unemployment claims. Jobless claims (Thu) jumped over the past three weeks through the week

Ed Yardeni

DEEP DIVE: Inflation - Why the Long Face?

Jun 14, 2024 3 min read paid

Among the hottest topics at dinner tables and at corporate boardrooms tables across the country—not to mention election campaign offices—is inflation. The topic of inflation has heated up along with inflation itself but doesn’t seem to be cooling off along with it. The US economy contended with its first significant bout of price pressures since the 1980s after pandemic stimulus measures boosted demand in the face of

Ed Yardeni

Low Inflation Readings Stampede the Bulls

Jun 13, 2024 2 min read paid

On Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) warned markets to expect no more than one interest rate cut over the rest of this year. But the bulls are charging ahead anyway on May's lower-than-expected CPI and PPI inflation data yesterday and today. The 10-year US Treasury bond yield is down nearly 25bps since Monday's high to 4.24% (chart). The Nasdaq hit

Ed Yardeni

Inflation Moderates & Stocks Soar As Fed Aims For One Rate Cut In 2024

Jun 12, 2024 2 min read paid

Hooray! The S&P 500 closed slightly above our yearend target of 5400 today (chart). The same thing happened to us last year: We were forecasting 4600 by the end of 2024 and got there by mid-year. The index closed around 4800 at the end of last year. So what do we do now? We’ll talk and write more about our 2025 and 2026 targets of 6000

Ed Yardeni

Dr Ed's Video Webcast 6/12/24

Jun 12, 2024 1 min read paid

How the labor market is doing is critical to the Fed’s setting of monetary policy given its dual mandate to steer the economy away from both too-high unemployment and too-high inflation. But gauging how the labor market is doing can be a stumper: Two different employment indicators point in different directions. … Less ambivalent are the indicators of wage inflation: All point to continued moderation. … We believe the

Ed Yardeni

Game Over For Birth/Death Adjustment?

Jun 11, 2024 2 min read paid

Some economists claim that recent nonfarm payroll gains are misleadingly strong and are masking the underlying weakness in the labor market. These die-hard hard-landers point to a wonky calculation by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), i.e., the Birth/Death Adjustment (B/D). The B/D Adjustment attempts to account for job gains attributable to new businesses and job losses due to business closures that don'

Ed Yardeni

Bonds, Oil, Copper, Gold & The Dollar

Jun 10, 2024 3 min read

On a regular basis, we like to check on the correlations among the fixed income, commodity, and foreign currency markets. Here are a few of our observations: (1) Bonds. The 10-year US Treasury bond yield has normalized, fluctuating in a range roughly between 4.00% and 5.00% (chart). That's where it traded for a few years prior to the Great Financial Crisis. The same can be

Ed Yardeni

Market Call: Blue Angels Flying High

Jun 9, 2024 2 min read paid

Our Blue Angels framework shows that the S&P 500 was back in record high territory last week as S&P 500 forward earnings rose to yet another record high (chart). Meanwhile, the S&P 500's forward P/E has been relatively steady just above 20.0 in recent weeks. The S&P 500's forward P/E with and without the MegaCap-

Ed Yardeni

The Economic Week Ahead: June 10-14

Jun 9, 2024 3 min read paid

The economic week ahead will be dominated by the FOMC’s latest meeting (Wed) and May’s CPI report. The FOMC is widely expected to keep the federal funds rate (FFR) target range between 5.25% to 5.50% on Wednesday. The committee will also release its latest Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) showing the participants’ median forecasts for real GDP, the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, and the FFR.

Ed Yardeni

DEEP DIVE: Expecting Record S&P 500 Earnings Ahead

Jun 7, 2024 4 min read paid

Joe reports that the S&P 500 Q1 earnings reporting season is now 98% complete, with 490 companies having issued their results. The 10 companies left to report are: Lululemon Athletica, Bath & Body Works, Brown-Forman, Campbell Soup, J M Smucker, Dollar Tree, Kroger, Autodesk, Broadcom, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. Whatever those 10 firms report shouldn’t significantly change the aggregate results of the 500 companies in

Ed Yardeni

Will The Fed Join The Rate-Cutting Pack Of Central Banks?

Jun 6, 2024 2 min read

US stocks rose to record highs on Wednesday. European stocks did the same today after the ECB lowered its official interest rate to 3.75%, down from a record 4.00%, where it has been since September 2023 and the first cut since 2019. Leading the rate-cutting pack of the major central banks was the People's Bank of China, which lowered its prime rate last year on

Ed Yardeni

Charging to New Highs

Jun 5, 2024 3 min read paid

The S&P 500 rose to yet another record high today, once again led by semiconductor stocks, in particular, by Nvidia (chart). The chipmaker just joined the $3 trillion dollar market-cap club along with Microsoft and Apple. The long line to buy the company's GPU chips keeps getting longer. It will have a 10-for-1 stock split on Friday. Perversely, the bulls are also charged

Ed Yardeni

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