Note: originally published Friday, Nov 1 There wasn’t much by way of the ISM’s Manufacturing PMI to allay fears of recession. Much like the payroll numbers, an uncolored analysis of them, anyway, there was far more bad than good. For the month of October 2019, the index rose slightly from September’s decade low. At 48.3, it was up just half [...]
China was the world economy’s best hope in 2017. Like it was the only realistic chance to push out of the post-2008 doldrums, a malaise that has grown increasingly spasmatic and dangerous the longer it goes on. Communist authorities, some of them, anyway, reacted to Euro$ #3’s fallout early on in 2016 by dusting off their Keynes. A stimulus panic [...]
Flash PMI’s from IHS Markit for the US economy were split in October. According to the various sentiment indicators, there’s a little bit of a rebound on the manufacturing side as contrary to the ISM’s estimates for the same sector. Markit reports a sharp uptick in current manufacturing business volumes during this month. The manufacturing index came in at 51.5, [...]
For the second time this week, the ISM managed to burst the bond bear bubble about there being a bond bubble. Who in their right mind would buy especially UST’s at such low yields when the fiscal situation is already a nightmare and becoming more so? Some will even reference falling bid-to-cover ratios which supposedly suggests an increasing dearth of [...]
It seems as if we’ve found one of those interim periods that often accompany times of uncertainty. Markets, stocks as well as bonds, are in a wait-and-see mode. Either the next shoe drops, as is feared, or the grand response works, as is widely hoped. Which way are the risks perhaps rebalancing? The global downturn that developed late last year [...]
Mario Draghi can thank Jay Powell at his retirement party. The latter being so inept as to allow federal funds, of all things, to take hold of global financial attention, everyone quickly shifted and forgot what a mess the ECB’s QE restart had been. But it’s not really one or the other, is it? Once it actually finishes, the takeaway [...]
It was framed as a good news/bad news sort of situation. For many, the entire issue of possible recession revolves around the service sector. As far as manufacturing goes, no one will argue otherwise; it’s already in trouble. But it’s a much smaller slice of overall economic activity, and unless we are talking 2008 levels of collapse there “needs” to [...]
Copper prices behave more deliberately than perhaps prices in other commodity markets. Like gold, it is still set by a mix of economic (meaning physical) and financial (meaning collateral and financing). Unlike gold, there doesn’t seem to be any rush to get to wherever the commodity market is going. Over the last several years, it has been more long periods [...]
It’s becoming fashionable again to dismiss manufacturing. In 2015, we heard repeatedly how it represented only 12% of overall economic output. Any minor problems affecting such a small slice would surely be nothing much for the other seven-eights of the economy to overcome. There was no way Yellen’s rate hikes and the booming recovery they would anticipate would be derailed [...]
In every likelihood, the Federal Reserve today is going to join other central banks around the world who have already cut rates. It is the synchronized signal completing the turn from globally synchronized growth into a globally synchronized downturn. To most people in the United States, at least, this is a puzzling shift. The unemployment rate says things are [...]
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