The Consensus is Defying the U.S. Consumer
QUICK QUILL — Since mid-2022, consumers have run against the grain with regard to forward rate guidance. Downshifts in income and stock price expectations also counter the consensus’ forecast for an acceleration in third-quarter spending. Add…
Fundamentals Take a Back Seat
QUICK QUILL — The U.S. Treasury market appears to be in the clutches of the mother of all momentum trades. Under such circumstances, fundamentals are an afterthought. We don’t have that luxury. Industrial signals throughout the…
All Signs Point to Wage Disinflation
QUICK QUILL — It’s saying something when the bureaucracy otherwise known as the Federal Reserve is in layoff mode. We see job cut announcements continuing to gain steam driven by Higher for Longer seeping executives’ capacity…
Looking Past Headline Initial Jobless Claims
QUICK QUILL — As we wrote in this week’s The Great Hibernation, the economy is waking from a near-15-year expansion. While momentum and inertia are powerful forces, the risk is rising that the fast-devolving credit cycle bleeds…
Lower Hurdle to Perma-Pause
QUICK QUILL — Oil’s rally is not being driven by stronger global industrial or domestic gasoline demand. In turn, the higher price is helping whittle away consumer purchasing power that’s manifested in Citi’s credit card data…
Connecting Ailing Canadian and U.S. Housing Markets
QUICK QUILL — Canadian inflation may have beaten market expectations inciting a knee-jerk reaction across North American rates markets. However, upstream and downstream Canadian forestry and lumber pricing, deteriorating trends for rail carloads and pessimistic guidance…
Signs of Double Dip Multiplying
QUICK QUILL — Home builders, New York State service sector executives and Wall Street deal makers are brandishing double-dip recessionary behavior. The headwinds facing these labor-intensive industries along with service pricing normalizing in the Second Federal…
Auto Sector Relieved to Have Supply Taken Offline
QUICK QUILL — The UAW strike will salvage an auto industry that was headed into a supply-laden downturn. Add this irony to the laundry list of reprieves called on the most delayed recessions in U.S. history.…
The IRS Pulls the Plug on the Employee Retention Credit
QUICK QUILL — The IRS arresting the Employee Tax Credit will remove a major source of spending support for high-income Americans and a material income stream for news outlets that had increasingly enjoyed the ad revenues…