US Economy

The Economic Week Ahead (August 22-26)

Aug 21, 2022 1 min read

The big event of the coming week will occur on Friday at 10:00 am EDT, when Fed Chair Jerome Powell will address the annual global central banking conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Nothing much has changed since his press conference on July 27 other than that the S&P 500 is 7.8% higher. So he is likely to signal another rate hike in late September aimed at

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 might

Ed Yardeni

Mixed Messages From Manufacturing & Housing

Aug 16, 2022 1 min read paid

July was a good month for manufacturing and a bad one for the housing industry. Industrial production, which is one of the four components of the Index of Coincident Indicators, rose 0.6% m/m to a new record high during July (chart). Housing starts tumbled during the month. Building permits, which is one of the 10 components of the Index of Leading Indicators, also fell during July. There'

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, and

Ed Yardeni

Plenty of Sunshine In Q3's GDPNow & July's CPI

Aug 10, 2022 1 min read paid

There's lots of sunshine in the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tracking model. Today's estimate shows that real GDP is rising at a 2.5% pace (saar) during Q3 (table). Consumer spending is tracking at 2.7%. It is looking like an up quarter for capital spending, government outlays, and exports so far. The downers, so far, are residential investment, imports, and the change in private

Ed Yardeni

Hooray: Inflation Cooled Off In July!

Aug 10, 2022 1 min read

July's headline and core CPI inflation rates were lower than expected at 0.0% and 0.3% (table below). The y/y rates were down to 8.5% and 5.9% below recent peaks of 9.1% (in June) and 6.5% in March). That's consistent with our view that inflation is peaking, but remains too high. So we expect that the Fed will hike the

Ed Yardeni

Mixed Inflation Indicators

Aug 9, 2022 1 min read

Today we learned that July's survey of small business owners showed that inflation might have peaked. On the other hand, there was no peak in today's productivity and unit labor costs report for Q2: (1) The small business owners survey found that 56% of them are raising prices, while 37.0% are planning to do so. Both are down from their peaks earlier this year. However,

Ed Yardeni

Lots of Jobs, But Inflation Eroding Wage Gains

Aug 5, 2022 1 min read paid

July's payroll employment in July blew past forecasts, and there were upward revisions to the prior two months, boosting payrolls back up to pre-pandemic levels and a new record high. The bad news is that the wage-price spiral is still spiraling and reducing the purchasing power of consumers:

Ed Yardeni

US Services Economy Continues To Grow

Aug 3, 2022 1 min read

The S&P 500 stock price index and the 10-year US Treasury bond yield are both up today following July's better-than-expected ISM nonmanufacturing purchasing managers index (NM-PMI). It edged up to 56.7 last month. Last week's S&P Global flash estimate suggested it would be weaker. Here's more: (1) The NM-PMI's new orders index was strong at 59.9.

Ed Yardeni

Less Helped Wanted

Aug 2, 2022 1 min read paid

There are still 1.8 open jobs per available worker. However, June's job openings dropped 605,000 to about 10.7 million, the fewest since September 2021. It was the sharpest decline since April 2020, when the economy was in the lockdown recession.

Ed Yardeni

No Recession In Truck Tonnage & Employment

Aug 1, 2022 1 min read

The trucking industry didn't get the recession memo yet. The ATA's For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index increased 2.7% in June after rising 0.3% in May. In June, the index equaled 120.1, rebounding almost back to its pre-pandemic record high. Trucking is a good coincident indicator of the economy, representing 72.5% of tonnage carried by all modes of domestic freight transportation, including manufactured and

Ed Yardeni

US Regional Business Slowing; Inflation Peaking

Jul 29, 2022 1 min read

July's national manufacturing purchasing managers index (M-PMI) will be released on Monday. Will investors cheer it? The regional business surveys conducted by five of the 12 Federal Reserve district banks suggest that the M-PMI should fall closer to 50.0 from June's 53.0 (chart below). The M-PMI's prices-paid index, which remained very high at 78.5, should also moderate somewhat, according to the

Ed Yardeni

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