Consumer

ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: April 28–May 2

Apr 27, 2025 3 min read paid

The week ahead is jampacked with economic updates. The headliners will be Q1's GDP and March's personal income and expenditures (both Wed) as well as April's payroll employment (Fri). We're expecting relatively strong employment data, which should highlight the US economy's resilience notwithstanding Trump's Tariff Turmoil (TTT). The week's inflation indicators likely remained subdued, although tariff-related

Ed Yardeni

Strongest Buy Signal Ever?

Apr 24, 2025 3 min read paid

On Sunday (April 20), we observed that The Economist had just featured three consecutive very bearish cover stories suggesting that the dollar might be on the verge of collapse and that so might the US stock and bond markets along with the US economy. Make that four consecutive bearish cover stories, with this week's magazine showing an eagle battered by Trump's first 100 days (image). We

Ed Yardeni

A Rubik's Cube Of Questions Along With Some Weak Soft Data

Apr 15, 2025 3 min read paid

Will tariffs boost inflation and depress the US and global economies? Will inflation be transitory or persistent? Will the economy remain surprisingly resilient, at least for the next few months? Will consumers retrench after they go on a tariff-beating buying binge? Will robust capital spending related to onshoring offset weakness related to Trump's Tariff Turmoil (TTT)? Will China and the US escalate their trade war? Who will blink

Ed Yardeni

MARKET CALL: Wall Street Is Main Street

Apr 6, 2025 4 min read paid

Conspiracy theories are usually wrong even though they seem to explain a lot. The latest conspiracy theory floating on social media is that President Donald Trump is causing a recession to bring interest rates down to reduce the federal government's net interest outlays and to lower mortgage rates to make homes more affordable. A recession would also weaken the foreign exchange value of the dollar, which would boost

Ed Yardeni

In 10 Charts: Consumer Confidence & Jobs

Feb 25, 2025 3 min read

The stock market sold off this morning on a decline in February's Consumer Confidence Index (CCI), confirming a similar decline in February's Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI), which was reported at the end of last week. The CSI survey tends to be more affected by inflation, while the CCI survey is more affected by employment. The former was weak this month on concerns about rising inflation, while

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

ECONOMIC WEEK: February 24-28

Feb 23, 2025 3 min read paid

The week ahead will feature Nvidia's earnings report after the market closes on Wednesday. That may be more important to the stock market than any of the economic indicators to be released during the week. Last week, Elon Musk's artificial-intelligence startup, xAI, unveiled its latest AI model, Grok 3, claiming it outperforms DeepSeek and OpenAI models across various benchmarks. The firm utilized 200,000 GPUs to

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

ECONOMIC WEEK: January 27-31

Jan 26, 2025 3 min read paid

The week ahead is packed full of important economic data releases, big tech earnings reports, and central bank meetings. Economic updates will include consumer sentiment, manufacturing, economic growth, and inflation. We're broadly expecting strong growth, including the first estimate of Q4 real GDP to come in around its historical average at 3.0% y/y (Tue), increasing from Q3's 2.7% (chart). Inflation should remain low,

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

The Economic Week Ahead: January 6-10

Jan 5, 2025 3 min read paid

The economic week ahead is chockful of labor market indicators for November and December. We're expecting them to beat expectations. As long as corporate earnings continue to reach new record highs, companies are likely to hire more workers and increase real wages (chart). Ultimately, that supports consumer spending and stock prices. Still, there are a number of potential headwinds for stocks, not the least of which is rising

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Still Betting on US Consumers

Dec 17, 2024 3 min read paid

Consumer spending rose again in November, with real retail sales rising more than 3.0% y/y (chart). Rising real labor and nonlabor incomes, plus a strong wealth effect from record highs in stock and home prices, have boosted spending for the past two years. The GOP election sweep also means the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will likely be extended in full, and there's talk in

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Super Macro. Not So Super Micro.

Oct 31, 2024 3 min read paid

Some of the air is coming out of the AI trade. Super Micro Computer hasn't been super recently. It fell 12% today after auditor Ernst & Young resigned due to inaccurate financial reporting, and is now down 66% over the past six months (chart). Super Micro Computer is a key vendor for building out Nvidia-based clusters of servers used for training and deploying AI models Meta and Microsoft

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

When American Consumers Are Depressed, They Go Shopping

Sep 25, 2024 3 min read paid

Consumer confidence has been relatively depressed for the past couple of years according to the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) and Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI), which are based on surveys conducted by The Conference Board and the University of Michigan. The Consumer Optimism Index, which we calculate as the average of the CCI and CSI remains down and out (chart). The CCI tends to be more sensitive to employment, while the

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

No News Is Good News

Sep 9, 2024 3 min read paid

Dr. Ed was interviewed on Bloomberg Surveillance this morning at 7 a.m (see link below). Ace journalist Lisa Abramowitcz noted that during the summer, we were saying that the economy is resilient and doesn't need much monetary stimulus, which might cause a meltup in stock prices. Now we are saying that if the Fed cuts the federal funds rate (FFR) by 50bps instead of 25bps on September

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

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