Fed Tag

U.S. Core PCE Inflation is Still Not Coming Down

02 Jun, by Brian Clark in Economy, News

In the United States, Core PCE Inflation is still 5.0% after a recent reversal in disinflation. This measure is followed by the Fed and excludes volatile food and energy inflation. It has remained elevated on an annualized quarterly basis, with a 1-year percent change of...

Mid-Quarter Update: Tightening Credit

17 May, by Steven Vannelli, CFA in Economy, News

Credit conditions are tightening in both Europe and the United States. Our analysis follows in our mid-quarter update, Tightening Credit. ​​​​Prefer to download this presentation in PDF? Please click here.   1. Summary -Credit conditions in both Europe and the United States tightened significantly recently. -We had our AI engine...

Will Gas Prices Foreshadow Higher Inflation Expectations?

27 Apr, by Brian Clark in Economy, News

Tomorrow, the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Survey will give us more information on US consumers’ inflation expectations. The survey respondents’ inflation expectations, as other analysts have pointed out, are highly correlated with gasoline prices, which rose in March by 3.7%. This survey, along with...

Hawkish & Uncertain

27 Apr, by Steven Vannelli, CFA in Economy, News

Yesterday JP Morgan introduced a new model to quantify the last 20 years of Federal Reserve statements and speeches. While we aren’t privy to the details of the AI model, we will just assume that the model properly captures dovish and hawkish language. Based on Fed...

The Case for Gold is Looking Stronger

27 Mar, by Austin Mann in Economy

The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet grew by $394B in the past two weeks. In the context of all G4 central banks, this move alone erases half of all quantitative tightening (QT) progress since the beginning of the year. A directional change like this could indicate...

What are JGBs Trying to Tell Us?

23 Mar, by Tom Nemechek in Economy, News

Yields on 10-Year Japanese Government Bonds have fallen by about a third over the past two weeks, as shown in the chart below. Given the tumult surrounding banks recently, and a series of relatively dismal economic data releases out of Japan, this isn’t exactly surprising. This...

Fed’s Balance Sheet Balloons

21 Mar, by Brian Clark in Economy

To shore up Silicon Valley Bank and the other failed banks, the Federal Reserve extended an open-ended line of credit via its Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) and discount window borrowings. So far, this program has increased the Fed’s balance sheet equal to roughly half...

Fed Repriced Out of Action

13 Mar, by Steven Vannelli, CFA in Economy, Markets, News

We just experienced the fastest bank run in history with the closure of Silicon Valley Bank. Apparently over 40% of the company’s deposits fled last Thursday and early Friday before closure. To put this is context, when Continental Illinois—at the time, the largest ever bank...

Is the Fed Winning the Inflation War?

31 Jan, by Brian Clark in Economy

In anticipation of tomorrow’s rate decision, we saw another indicator today that the Federal Reserve has been successful in stemming the tide of inflation. The Employment Cost Index for the fourth quarter of 2022 came in under expectations at 1% quarter-over-quarter, or about 4% annualized....

December CPI Report Makes Next Fed Moves More Uncertain

12 Jan, by Brian Clark in Economy

The December U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index came in exactly as expected according to Bloomberg’s survey of economists. Headline CPI came in at -0.1% month over month and 6.5% year over year, and Core (CPI Ex Food and Energy) came in at...

Chinese Devaluation Seems Likely

16 Aug, by Steven Vannelli, CFA in Economy

Over the weekend, we got a slew of data showing a generally weak economy. Below are the actual data compared with the expectations from Bloomberg. Of course, the headline grabber was the -31.4% drop in residential property sales, but across the board, from industrial production to...

Thoughts on Fed Meeting and Rest of Year

04 May, by Steven Vannelli, CFA in Economy, Markets, News

Today the Federal Open Market Committee raised the fed funds rate (upper bound) to 1% from 50bps. The most surprising element of the press conference was the Chairman dismissing that the committee is not “actively” considering a 75bps hike right now. This sent algos into...

Is Powell’s Confidence Shared by the Rest of the FOMC?

17 Mar, by Steven Vannelli, CFA in Economy

While many commentators scratched their heads at the Fed’s latest summary of economic projections (SEP), the market took its cue from Chairman Powell's suggestion the US economy can withstand a barrage of rate increases this year without negatively impacting growth. In addition to the SEP, the...

Will They or Won’t They?

08 Mar, by Steven Vannelli, CFA in Markets, News

The Federal Reserve has all but cemented expectations for a 25bps rate hike next week. But, events have changed a lot in the last couple weeks that raise a faint hint that the Fed may not hike, despite elevated, persistent inflation. What makes us question whether...