VIPs The spread between the 5-year note and 30-year bond fell below 100 basis points over the last week, hitting 85 bps in yesterday’s trading session; after the 1990, 2001, and 2007-09 recessions, the 100 bps level served as a demarcation line from early to...

VIPs U.S. retail sales surprised to the upside in September, seeing a 0.7% MoM gain vs. the -0.2% consensus while July and August saw a combined 0.4% upward revision; in response, equities rallied led by cyclicals, while Treasuries sold off with higher yields in 10s...

VIPs Per data from the Association of American Railroads, intermodal trailer traffic, a proxy for truck output, downshifted from double-digit expansion to contraction from June to October; a driver shortage, as well as a lack of chassis at ports, are impeding trucking...

VIPs The second and third quarters of 2021 saw CPI for toys post positive YoY prints for the first time since Q4 1996 and Q1 1997; California PMI Supplier Deliveries Index should continue to surge into Q4, with Chapman University expecting times to slow at a record...

VIPs ADP’s September jobs report saw businesses with 500 or more employees gain 390,000 jobs vs. 178,000 for smaller businesses; the 212,000 difference was the fourth largest on record, and reversed the trend of smaller businesses seeing larger job gains over the...

VIPs Canada saw 157,000 jobs gained last month, more than 2.5 times the consensus and above every estimate in the Bloomberg survey; the 0.8% MoM pushed employment back to pre-pandemic levels and would have translated to a proportional 1.2 million bump in the U.S....

VIPs The unemployed have fallen by 1.8 million in the last three months, a decline that compares solely to 2020’s post-pandemic reopening; permanent job losers are down by 936,000 and account for more than half the improvement, a confidence vote for a sustainable...

VIPs Mitch McConnell has agreed to go along with raising the debt ceiling by $480 million, keeping things open through early December; while this gives time for Democrats to raise it again through reconciliation, negotiations between party factions remain a roadblock...

VIPs Since April 2020, roughly 40% of job gains have come from leisure & hospitality, per ADP, well above the 20% average from 2010-2019; meanwhile, non-leisure has underperformed in the post-pandemic environment, seeing just 60% of job gains vs. 80% in the decade...

VIPs Over the last week, IHS Markit has lowered its Q3 GDP estimate (as has the Atlanta Fed), from 3.6% to 1.5%, a far cry from Bloomberg’s 5.0%; driving the downgrade is a stall in private demand, which is working against increasing government spending and...