Economic Survey

Small Business Owners Have Some Bad News

Nov 8, 2022 1 min read

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) released its October survey of small business owners today. They remain pessimistic about the general business outlook. They are still struggling to find workers and to keep them. In any event, their labor costs are rising rapidly and forcing them to raise their prices. They've been sucked into the economy's wage-price spiral. During October, 32% of small business

Ed Yardeni

PMI Prices-Paid Indexes Predicting Falling Inflation

Nov 5, 2022 1 min read

Rapidly rising inflation since early last year has forced the Fed to raise interest rates significantly this year. That's been bad news for stock and bond investors, particularly this year. From the end of the Great Financial Crisis through the end of the Great Virus Crisis (i.e., 2009-2021), the winning investment strategy was to own both assets. Investors' mantra was: "Don't fight

Ed Yardeni

S&P 500: Why Today's Sizzle?

Oct 17, 2022 2 min read

The S&P 500 sizzled last week on Thursday. It fizzled on Friday. Why is it sizzling again today? On Friday, Reuters interviewed St. Louis Fed President James Bullard. As we observed in today's Morning Briefing, Bullard said that he favors “frontloading” hikes in the FFR, with a wait-and-see stance on 2023. In other words, he suggested that the Fed should go ahead with the

Ed Yardeni

Labor Shortages Depressing Small Business Owners

Oct 11, 2022 2 min read paid

Today, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) released its September survey of small business owners. They are about as depressed as they have ever been. That’s not because their sales are terrible. Rather, they can’t find enough workers to expand their businesses. So they’ve had to raise both the wages they pay and the prices they charge. However, September’s survey suggested that inflationary pressures are

Ed Yardeni

Inflation Expectations Falling Fast Along With Pump Price

Sep 12, 2022 1 min read

We believe that it is the pump price of gasoline prominently posted daily at every service station in America that has the most immediate and largest effect on inflationary expectations. It soared earlier this year and so did inflationary expectations, which fell sharply during July and August along with gasoline prices (chart below). August's CPI is out tomorrow morning and is expected to be down 0.1% m/

Ed Yardeni

The Economic Week Ahead, September 12-16

Sep 10, 2022 1 min read

It's another action packed week ahead. On the inflation front, we are expecting that, on Monday, the FRB-NY survey of consumer inflationary expectations will show some moderation, reflecting the plunge in gasoline prices, while food inflation remained elevated. On Tuesday, August's CPI should do the same. August's NFIB survey of small business owners (released on Wednesday) is likely to show that lots of

Ed Yardeni

Divine Disinflation In NM-PMI Survey

Sep 6, 2022 1 min read

Investors are rooting for "divine disinflation." We all want inflation to come down without a painful recession. We want the Fed to tighten one more time by 75bps and then to pause for a while. This morning's release of August's survey of non-manufacturing purchasing managers was consistent with this wishful thinking. That might explain why the S&P 500 rallied after the

Ed Yardeni

August's M-PMI: More Stag & Less Flation

Sep 1, 2022 1 min read paid

August's M-PMI provides confirmation of our economic outlook including a growth recession and moderating inflationary pressures. On balance, it should have been bullish for both bonds and stocks this morning, but the prices of both are down. That's because, today is the first day that the Fed is ramping up QT2, i.e., letting its balance sheet shrink by $95 billion per month. The composite

Ed Yardeni

Europeans Are In A Foul Mood

Aug 31, 2022 1 min read

The Eurozone's Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) slipped further below 100.0 to 97.6 during August (chart below). This indicates that the growth rate of the region's real GDP could turn negative during the second half of this year, or early next year. European are scrambling to store natural gas for the winter because they fear that Putin will cut off Russian exports of the fuel

Ed Yardeni

Flash US Business Indicators Flashing Orange

Aug 23, 2022 1 min read paid

S&P Global released its August flash indexes based on its surveys of US manufacturing and non-manufacturing purchasing managers. They are flashing an ongoing slowdown, especially for the NM-PMI. Our quick take is that the data are confirming our "growth recession" assessment of the US economy in 2022.

Ed Yardeni

NY & Philly Surveys: Weakening Business & Prices

Aug 18, 2022 1 min read

We now have two of the five regional business surveys conducted during August by the Federal Reserve district banks of NY and Philly: (1) NY was very weak, while Philly offset some of that weakness. The average of the two composites of business activity fell in August to -12.6, the lowest reading since the 2020 rebound from the lockdown recession. Collectively they suggest that August's M-PMI

Ed Yardeni

Fed's NY Business Survey Takes A Dive In August

Aug 15, 2022 1 min read

The charts below show that business activity plunged during August, according to the monthly survey of the Fed's NY district. It's a shocker. Here are the details: "Business activity declined sharply in New York State, according to firms responding to the August 2022 Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The headline general business conditions index plummeted forty-two points to -31.3. New orders and shipments plunged,

Ed Yardeni

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