Tomorrow we get the consumer price index year-over-year for January, with expectations for 7.25%. This would take the CPI to a new high for the cycle, rising from 7% year-over-year from December. We would like to see the print undershoot and offer several reasons why it...
Since May 2020, the Chinese Yuan has defied the path of other emerging market currencies, strengthening by almost 12%. This has left it overvalued compared to other emerging market countries. While Yuan strength made sense in 2020 when the USD was weakening. It is curious that in...
Last week we commented that despite the very tame CPI reading, alternate measures of inflation were telling a different story. Chief among them are inflation expectations as priced by the Treasury bond market. Well, this week we again got another inflation data print that showed...
The post-Fed action in the bond market yesterday was impressive, yet left some begging for answers. If the Fed raised short rates yesterday and reiterated its plans for the subsequent five rate increases through 2018, shouldn't the long-end be selling off? If it were only...
While we recognize that the negative year-over-year change in the US CPI may soon reverse given gas prices have risen by nearly 30 cents, we wanted to highlight how rare a negative year-over-year print is in the US....
Last week we wrote a few posts here, here and here noting the significant deterioration in EPS and sales growth estimates over the last few months....
Last month we mentioned how world inflation had reached a 56-month low. Well, the latest data (through August) shows world inflation, by our simple average of 33 countries year-over-year change in CPI, is creeping lower again. The latest reading stands at 1.65%....
The NAHB Housing Market Index increased to 58 to post the highest number since August, which is also the highest level of the recovery. The HMI correlates pretty well with house prices. And house prices, in turn, tend to lead CPI Owner’s Equivalent Rent....
Important survey data out of Europe today points to a growing disparity between the region’s two largest economies....
Inflation is low around the world. According to our simple average of 33 CPIs (and 22 PPIs) inflation has been falling for the past four months. Not surprising then, inflation surprises are negative as well....
Mortgage apps and existing home sales both fell. Mortgage apps dropped 2.3% week-over-week while existing home sales it’s first 3-month decline since May 2011. The year-over-year change in the CPI fell to a four-year low. Other than the negative CPI prints in 2009, this is...
To get an idea of what the approximate ”inflation temperature” is around the world, we do a very simple exercise of averaging the year-over-year percentage change in CPI and PPI in a variety of countries around the world. We do our best to capture every...
Two of the largest expenses for consumers are housing and gasoline. The gain in house prices suggest that the owner’s equivalent rent portion of CPI will rise in the coming months. Meanwhile, retail gasoline prices suggests that the gasoline component of CPI will fall....
