Inflation

Soft Landing

Dec 1, 2022 2 min read

The bears disparaged yesterday's stock market rally claiming that Fed Chair Jerome Powell's speech at the Brookings Institution was hawkish and didn't justify the market's bullish spin. We believe that the bulls correctly perceive that inflation peaked this summer and were relieved to hear Powell say that the Fed might be willing to let inflation subside without pushing the economy into a

Ed Yardeni

Sweet & Sour

Nov 29, 2022 1 min read paid

Today's release of November's Consumer Confidence Index showed that the labor market remains relatively tight. The percentage of respondents saying that jobs are plentiful remained high at 45.8%. That's still elevated even though it was mostly around 55.0% last year. This series closely tracks the job openings series in the JOLTS report, which will come out tomorrow for October (chart). The Fed

Ed Yardeni

On A Wing & A Prayer

Nov 17, 2022 2 min read paid

Ed Yardeni

Ups & Downs Of Inflation

Nov 15, 2022 2 min read paid Featured

We certainly aren’t out of the inflation woods yet, but we do seem to be heading in the right direction to get out of this dark forest. Let’s review the latest batch of inflation indicators, starting with two disappointing ones: (1) Inflation expectations uptick. On Monday, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released its October survey of inflation expectations of Americans. It headed in the wrong way,

Ed Yardeni

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 owners

Ed Yardeni

Third Year of Presidential Cycle Is Bullish

Nov 8, 2022 1 min read paid Featured

We previously observed that the stock market has a strong tendency to perform well following midterm elections irrespective of the actual election outcome. Since 1942, during each of the 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month periods following each of the 20 midterm elections, the S&P 500 was up on average by 7.6%, 14.1%, and 14.9%. Of the 60 observations, only three of them were negative. But none

Ed Yardeni

Economic Week Ahead, November 7-11

Nov 5, 2022 1 min read paid

You can access a “live” version of the calendar below--with links to our automatically updated charts for most of the indicators shown--at this link on our website; bookmark it for easy access. Financial market participants have freaked out about the CPI during most of the previous months this year. Will they do so again over October's CPI (released on Thu.)? Maybe not this time. We expect further signs

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 the

Ed Yardeni

Powell Turns Even More Hawkish

Nov 2, 2022 2 min read Featured

During his press conference today, Fed Chair Jerome Powell continued to read from the Volcker 2.0 script. His punchline appeared in his prepared remarks: “[W]e still have some ways to go, and incoming data since our last meeting suggest that the ultimate level of interest rates will be higher than previously expected.” During the Q&A portion of his presser, Powell repeated “some ways to go” several

Ed Yardeni

What Will Powell Say?

Nov 1, 2022 2 min read paid

Tomorrow afternoon, the FOMC is widely expected to increase the federal funds rate by 75bps to a range of 3.75%-4.00%. There is much less certainty about what Fed Chair Jerome Powell will say at his press conference at 2:30 p.m. after the meeting. The bulls, including yours truly, are hoping to hear that after another rate hike of 75bps next month to 4.50%-4.

Ed Yardeni

Regional Surveys Suggest Weak M-PMI

Oct 31, 2022 1 min read

Bonds and stocks might rally tomorrow if the M-PMI is as weak as suggested by the regional business surveys conducted by five of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks. The average of the five composite indexes dropped deeper into negative territory during October (chart). The average of the new orders indexes remained near recent negative readings, while the average for the employment indexes remained solidly positive. All three are highly

Ed Yardeni

MegaCaps, ECB & ECI

Oct 25, 2022 1 min read

History shows that the Santa Claus rally usually starts during October. This year, the S&P 500 had a terrible September, falling 9.3%. Since the end of that month through today's close, the index is up 7.6%. It could be tough sledding for Santa over the rest of this week. After the close, Google missed earnings as YouTube's ad revenue disappointed. In addition,

Ed Yardeni

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