Copper, like lumber, had been the star of the space. Each had rocketed upward beginning last fall representing, for many, the leading edge of the inflationary wave sure to follow. The two garnered that much attention as well as given this much importance because the rest of the commodity class hadn’t really come close to matching their meteoric scale.It was [...]
It has taken nearly two years for Germany’s ZEW to finally close its gap. The index for sentiment had popped all the way back in September 2019 buoyed by the ECB restarting QE; these peculiar German businesspersons who make up this particular survey panel do love their “stimulus” announcements no matter how many times the actual policy fails to stimulate [...]
Money printing. Overheating. Going from an economy stuck in the mud to one rocketing ahead seemingly in the blink of an eye. Careless government officials steadfastly forecasting Goldilocks, surely whistling past the consumer price graveyard of stagflation misery.Long believed dead, that seventies Inflation Monster relit maybe by necessity but now on the loose lurking just beneath the surface, ready to [...]
Back on February 23, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell stopped by (in a virtual, Zoom sense) the Senate Banking Committee to testify as required by law. In the Q&A portion, he was asked the following by Montana’s Senator Steve Daines: SENATOR DAINES. I just was looking at the T bill chart and noticing since the 1st of February, the one [...]
Count retail sales (US) among the dead data. Like recent CPI’s and PPI’s, consumer spending on goods continues to be sky high – and yet markets (even stocks) don’t seem to care. For the month of June 2021, the Census Bureau believes total sales were up when compared to May, though not much as May’s estimate was revised lower. At [...]
The 30-year US Treasury bond yield dipped below 2% today for the first time since early February. The unsurprising nasty “surprise” in the ISM combined with more concerning data especially surrounding China released over the long American holiday weekend have added more weight to fears the global economy has reached the limits of reopening. If we’ve already seen its best [...]
The FOMC held a meeting and that can only mean dots. These are the individual policymaker’s views on where the federal funds target range might end up down the road. The latest update for the June 2021 central bank conclave shows several more voting members projecting the first rate hikes to begin toward the end of next year, a supposedly [...]
Yesterday, lumber. Today, copper. The “doctor” has been in reverse for better than two months now, with trading in the current session pounding the commodity to a new multi-month low. Down almost $0.19 for the day, an unusual and eye-opening loss, this brings the cumulative decline to 9.2% since the peak way back on May 11.Is this just another modest [...]
It isn’t all base effects, or even all that much of them. Though these were higher in May 2021 than they had been in April, US consumer prices have accelerated regardless. According to the BLS and its latest CPI estimates, the net change in its headline index last month from last May was an excitable 4.99% (unadjusted). That’s the highest [...]
For the month of May 2021, China’s General Administration of Customs believes the total US$ value of exports exiting that country was an impressive-sounding $263.9 billion. Compared to the US$ value of exports sent abroad in May 2020, this was a 27.9% increase. But base effects; exports in May 2020 had been a little more than 3% below those in [...]
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