As of the close yesterday, the US two-year treasury yield was sitting at 61 basis points. For a little perspective, the two-year started the year at 39 basis points and hit a low in September 2011 of 17 basis points....
The spread between 30-year treasury yields and 10-year treasury yields fell to 65 basis points yesterday which is the lowest spread since January 21st, 2009. Since April 2013, the spread has narrowed by 59 basis points. As the long end has flattened, the spread between...
Nonfarm payrolls came in well above expectations at 321K vs expectations of 230K for November. In addition, the previous two months were both upwardly revised by a total 44K jobs. Private nonfarm payrolls were up a very impressive 314K....
The US ISM non-manufacturing survey for November was released today and showed an increase of 2.2 points to a robust level of 59.3....
US new home sales underwhelmed again in October. The latest data point came in at 458K SAAR versus consensus of 470K. What really caught are eye was the volatile increase in average and median prices. The average sales price spiked by nearly 28% month-over-month, easily...
On October 16th, the US 10-year treasury yield closed at 2.15% and the US 30-year treasury yield closed at 2.93%. Since then, the 10-year has widened by 21 bps and the 30-year by 14 bps. Interestingly, the move up in yields has not been due...
Looking out of our office and seeing signs of construction activity across Denver, it can be hard to imagine that 20% of the cities in the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index are still at least 30% off its all-time high....
All summer long we talked about how mortgage applications were down and couldn’t get off the mat. That looks to finally be changing, at least from a refinancing point of view over the past couple of weeks....
Initial claims for unemployment insurance fell to just 264K for the week of October 10th. This is the lowest level since April 14th, 2000. The non-seasonally adjusted series is now down 23% year-over-year. This is a positive sign that the US economy isn’t on the...
While the headline payroll numbers for September were positive, 248k vs 215k expected, and the August payroll number was revised much higher to 180K (from 142k), we are nonetheless very disappointed to see the participation drop to the lowest level since February 1977. The participation...
The Q-ratio, which is simply the equity market value of nonfarm, nonfinancial businesses divided by the net worth of those businesses, is at it’s highest level since December 2000. Since 1945, the average level is 0.70. The current reading is over 1 standard deviation above...
NYSE margin debt still hasn’t surpassed the all-time high made in in February but it is very close! Margin debt rose by about $3 billion in August and is only $2 billion below the all-time high set in February. Net margin debt inched higher and...
The ICSC-UBS/Goldman retail chain same-store sales is a useful weekly indicator of general merchandise spending which accounts for roughly 10% of the US retail market. Because it is a weekly data point, this series can look noisy....
Industrial production in the US came in below expectations for the month of August (-0.1% vs consensus estimate of 0.3%) and Capacity Utilization fell to a six month low . Meanwhile, the Empire State Manufacturing Survey surged past expectations for the September (27.5 vs consensus...
The volume of asset-backed commercial paper issued in millions of dollars currently sits at 14-year lows (blue line). After reaching levels of $90 billion issued, the ABCP market now sits at below $9 billion. However, the entire commercial paper market has rebound a little bit...
