From the middle of April through yesterday 10-year treasury rates rose from 2.17 to 2.40, prompting the obvious question of how high will they rise. The interesting thing about the recent slight backup in rates is that it has occurred within the context of slowing...
The US and China are not hitting their economic numbers of late according to the Citi Economic Surprise Index. The economic surprise index in China has recently fallen to 10-month lows. In the US, more economic releases are coming in below expectations than are beating...
There is a geographic disparity amongst the Citi Economic Surprise Index. Economies, both developed and emerging, are surprising to the upside in Asia and Europe while economies in the western hemisphere are not doing as well (at least in terms of meeting and exceeding expectations)....
The Citi Economic Surprise index is a quick way to get a high-level look at the condition of economic data around the world....
The Citi Economic Surprise Index has reached it’s highest level since February and has increased sharply since mid-May. On May 13th the surprise index fell to it’s lowest level since late 2008. However, since then it has been on a sharp trajectory upwards and has...
Economic data has generally been improving in the 2nd quarter according to the Citi Economic Surprise Index. There are, however, some notable exceptions. The United States briefly broke above the zero line earlier this week before falling back a few points....
The Citi Economic Surprise Index is a useful data point in determining whether or not a country or a region are meeting economic expectations. Throughout 2014 actual data has come in below expectations for most of the developed market economies as well as for China...
While the headline payroll number this morning beat consensus (a funky report overall that was obviously affected by weather), over the past seven weeks the economic reports out of the United States have been underwhelming to say the least judging by the Citi Economic Surprise...
Recently each day, especially in the US, it has felt as if the economic data has been a bit better than expected. The Citi Economic Surprise Index corroborates that feeling as it has now reached it’s highest level since February 2012....
There doesn’t seem to be a trend in the US economic releases recently. In the past week we have had weaker housing data (Pending Home Sales), an ok production data point (Industrial Production), below consensus employment report (ADP), a weaker regional survey (Dallas Fed), and...
Normally cyclical sectors outperform counter-cyclical sectors when the Citigroup Economic Surprise Index is rising and underperform when it is falling. The Citi Econ Surprise Index is now down since 9/12/13, having fallen over 25 points....
We divide the MSCI World index into cyclical (including materials, industrials, technology and consumer discretionary, financials and energy) and counter-cyclical baskets (including consumer staples, health care, telecom, utilities). The relative performance of cyclicals vs. counter-cyclicals generally improves when the economic news is improving and contracts...
