Overall retail sales came in much higher than the expected +0.3%yoy gain: Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for the entirety of the region remained steady for the eighth month in a row: However, when we look more closely at some of the individual countries, we notice a somewhat unexpected phenomenon.
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ADP showed a monthly increase of 238,000 jobs in December. This was the largest gain since November 2012. Perhaps most importantly for the labor market the gain was led by small firms (1-49 employees) which hired about 108,000 people in December. This was the largest increase for small firms since February 2012.
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Today’s release of statistics on car registrations in the U.K. continues a string of positive data releases. The cumulative total for 2013 (2.26 million) was the highest since 2007 (2.40 million) and up considerably from the low of just 1.94 million registrations in 2011.
Read MoreWhile the new year is only seven days old, there is already a trend of emerging market underperformance. There are several ETFs (below) we track to measure what is going on in the emerging markets…or the submerging markets as the case may be.
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World CPI (based on the average year-over-year change in 33 countries) ticked up slightly in November from 1.76% to 1.9%. Meanwhile, World PPI (based on the average year-over-year change in 22 countries) ticked up slightly as well but still remains negative in November.
Read MoreIn what was the biggest bond market rout in years, bond funds saw just over $500bn of outflows in 2013 according to the Investment Company Institute (through November). Meanwhile, equity funds accumulated $128bn in new assets, making 2013 the best asset accumulation year since 2007.
Read MoreThough we primarily use our point-and-figure methodology when assessing attributes of individual stocks, we are also able to look at broader sets of data (such as sectors) to get a quick sense of price performance.For the MSCI Europe, we have the good… …the bad… …and the undecideds: These charts serve as a good visual complement
Read MoreCommercial paper peaked at just under $2.2 trillion in 2007 before the wheels came off the shadow banking system. It is currently just over $950 billion, and still falling, almost seven years later. If present trends persist, the amount of outstanding commercial paper will make a new low in the weeks to come.
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While the headline ISM non-manufacturing number came just slightly below consensus (53 vs 54.8), the major news out of this report was new orders contracting for the first time since July 2009. In a mere four months, new orders have fallen from 60.5 to 49.4.
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The news out today is auto sales for the Big 3 US car manufactures increased 8% in 2013 which helped push sales to the highest level since 2007.
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