Trump Team Expects 3% to 4% Growth… Incoming Treasury Secretary Mnuchin reiterated the Trump campaign’s economic growth target of 3.5%, even though the U.S. hasn’t grown that fast consistently since the 1990s. What it means – I think this will be a recurring theme as the next administration gets settled in office and the Republican […]
U.S. Consumer Prices Up 0.3% in September… Energy and housing drove prices higher. Core inflation, excluding food and energy, rose a modest 0.1%. What it means – Prices increased 1.5% from last year, and core inflation jumped 2.2%. That’s higher than the Fed’s 2.0% target, but they don’t use the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ core […]
The U.S. Created 156,000 Jobs in September, the Unemployment Rate Ticked up to 5.0%… Labor force participation increased slightly, pushing up the number of unemployed. What it means – Two things. First, more Americans came off the sideline and started looking for work. Second, not very exciting. The numbers weren’t high enough to require a […]
ICANN or Cant I… Will the US turn over the internet? Will free speech and free markets suffer? What it means – Some of the greatest companies today owe their success to a free internet. Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and many more are just a few examples. On October 1st, President […]
Bond Yields Shot Higher Across the Globe as Prices Dropped… From the German bund to the U.S. Treasury, yields jumped on long maturity bonds as investors questioned the effectiveness of central bank policy. What it means – What took so long? Just about everyone on the planet not named Paul Krugman or a Central Banker […]
U.S. Nonfarm Productivity Fell an Annualized 0.5% in the Second Quarter… The drop follows a 0.6% slide in the first quarter. What it means – Analysts expected a 0.5% rise that would counter most of the drop in the first quarter. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Productivity remains a problem. Economists and Fed officials can’t figure […]
The U.S. Economy Created 255,000 Jobs in July… Unemployment remains at 4.9%, the third consecutive month it has sat below the 5% level of technical full employment. Markets reacted positively to the news. What it means – This makes two strong payroll prints in a row. And with upward revisions to both the May and June reports, the past three months […]
Housing Starts Up 4.8% in June, Reversing Decline in May… Single-family housing starts increased 4.4% and multifamily starts moved up 5.4%. What it means – Home builders will breathe a little easier knowing that housing isn’t sliding backward, but there’s not a lot of forward momentum, either. Housing starts climbed back to 1.189 million units on an annualized basis, which keeps […]
Bond and Stock Markets Both Reach Record Highs… The U.S. 10-year Treasury bond yield fell to 1.36%, a record low, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average both moved up to record highs. What it means– Both trends make perfect sense, but not from an investing point of view. For bonds, central banks around the world are […]