US Economy

Home For the Holidays

Nov 27, 2024 3 min read

This is the time of the year when we all count our blessings. The Yardeni Research team thanks you for your interest in our research. We wish you a great Thanksgiving tomorrow with your family and friends at your home or theirs. Since 2010, we've been recommending a Stay Home investment strategy, i.e., overweighting the US in global equity portfolios, rather than a Go Global strategy. So

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Stock Market Rally Broadening As Economy Chugs Along

Nov 21, 2024 3 min read

Fed officials may be cutting rates because they are worrying about the ominous "long and variable lags" of their monetary policy tightening from March 2022 through August 2024. But there are still no signs that those lags exist as the economy continues to chug along. It's true that the Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) fell yet again during October, but it has been a misleading

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Trump 2.0 Supercharges Our Stay Home Investment Strategy

Nov 14, 2024 3 min read paid

We've been bullish on the dollar for a while. Since, the Fed's September 18 meeting, the US Dollar Index (DXY) is up 5.8% (chart). Roughly half of that move has occurred since last Tuesday's US elections. The strong dollar confirms our view that the Fed has already cut the federal funds rate too much too soon, and now likely won’t be lowering

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

The Front Cover Curse

Oct 22, 2024 1 min read

We've been recommending overweighting the US in global equity portfolios since 2010. We still are, and it is still working (chart). We started writing about the Roaring 2020s in the US in 2020. For example, on August 11, 2020, we wrote: "We live in interesting, though not unprecedented, times. The Roaring 1920s could be a precedent for the Roaring 2020s. As Mark Twain observed: 'History doesn’

Ed Yardeni

Lost Decade Ahead For Stocks With Only 3% Annual Returns?

Oct 22, 2024 3 min read

We've been asked to comment on yesterday's grim forecast by economists at Goldman Sachs that the S&P 500 will produce annualized returns of only 3% (before accounting for inflation) over the next 10 years. They reckon that the range of possible outcomes includes -1% at the low end and +7% nominal returns at the high end. In our opinion, even Goldman's optimistic

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

US Economy Passing Tests With Flying Colors

Oct 3, 2024 3 min read paid

While everyone in our business breathlessly awaits tomorrow's payroll employment report, the economy passed the brunt of this week's labor market tests with flying colors. Of course, the labor market is showing signs of easing. But that's mostly compared to the record tightness seen a couple years ago. We think the labor market is normalizing. Meanwhile, the economy continues to prove stronger than many

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

The US Economy Is Roaring!

Oct 2, 2024 3 min read

Last Thursday on September 26, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released several very significant upward revisions to real GDP, real GDI, personal income, and personal saving. Collectively, they blew away the hard landing scenario. They didn't leave much if any room for the soft landing scenario either. They suggest that productivity growth will be revised higher and unit labor cost inflation will be revised lower. These revisions

Ed Yardeni

Soft Patch Getting Softer. Is That Raising Odds of Fed Rate Cut in September & Stock Market Meltup?

Jul 3, 2024 3 min read paid

Last week and this week have been good ones for the recession camp of economists. Indeed, the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tracking model's estimate of real GDP growth during Q2-2024 dropped from a robust 3.0% on June 26 to half as much today. The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index is the most negative it has been since August 2022 (chart). We are still in the soft-patch camp.

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Lackluster Fed Regional Business Surveys

Apr 29, 2024 2 min read paid

We now have the regional business surveys conducted by five of the Federal Reserve district banks. The average of their general business conditions indexes closely tracks the national manufacturing purchasing managers index (M-PMI), which rose slightly above 50.0 during March following 16 consecutive monthly readings below this level (chart). The regional average index was still negative in April. So it has yet to confirm that the rolling recession in

Ed Yardeni

The Man With The Midas Touch

Mar 26, 2024 2 min read paid

Ed Yardeni

Leading Indicator Still Misleading

Feb 20, 2024 2 min read

January's Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) was down again by 0.4% (chart). It has been falling since December 2021. It was the 23rd straight monthly decline, just one month short of the record-long slump that began in April 2007 and ran through March 2009 during the Great Financial Crisis. January's Index of Coincident Economic indicators rose 0.2% to yet another record high, continuing

Ed Yardeni

Bad Apple?

Jan 3, 2024 2 min read paid

The MegaCap-8 stocks led the S&P 500 down during the first two days of trading in 2024 (chart). The moves came after Barclays downgraded Apple on Tuesday and lowered its price target for shares of the company on fears of slowing iPhone 15 sales in China. We warned you about companies with exposure to the weak Chinese economy on December 26 in our QT titled "Prepare For

Ed Yardeni

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