<Click on chart for larger image> Real Time Economics – U.S. Inflation Undershoots the Fed’s 2% Target for the 35th Straight Month It’s now been nearly three years since U.S. inflation hit the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, according to new data from the Commerce Department. The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation… Continue reading U.S. Inflation And The Fed’s 2% Target
The Wall Street Journal – Greg Ip: In Labor vs. Capital, Workers Gain a Slight Edge For decades, labor’s share of American national income has shrunk while the share that goes to profits has expanded. There are now tantalizing signs that labor may finally be gaining ground on capital. Workers in the first quarter of… Continue reading All Eyes On Wage Growth
The Financial Times – Gillian Tett: Healthy liquidity diet needed to survive future financial shocks If US rates suddenly rise, retail investors might flood out of bond funds What are the big risks to the stability of western financial markets today? This week I posed that question to powerful finance industry professionals at the Milken… Continue reading Why Liquidity Matters
The Financial Times – Energy earnings run dry in Americas ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips of the US on Thursday reported that they lost money on oil and gas production in their home country in the first quarter. Meanwhile, Royal Dutch Shell disclosed a $1.1bn loss at its upstream exploration and production business in the Americas, and… Continue reading Poor Earnings For U.S. Oil Companies
Bloomberg.com – Claims May Be Poor Predictor of U.S. Payrolls, for Now The U.S. labor market stumbled in March, as job gains fell significantly short of expectations. In fact, the consensus forecast overshot by 119,000, the largest miss since December 2009 (when forecasts overshot by 283,000). The pressing question for economic forecasters is whether the… Continue reading Initial Claims Are A Poor Predictor For The Payroll Report
<Click on chart for larger image> The Economist – The Worst Is Yet To Come RUSSIA’S currency, the rouble, had a terrible 2014. As oil prices collapsed and Western sanctions bit, export revenues slumped. Nervous investors pulled $150 billion from the country. As a result, the rouble lost about half its value against the dollar… Continue reading Russia
CNBC – Why Europe might delay a Fed rate hike: Buffett Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said he believes the Federal Reserve won’t be in any hurry to increase interest rates—in part because of the softer U.S. economy at the start of the year, but more so due to what’s going on in European bond markets.… Continue reading Buffett Speaks About The Fed
The Economist – The 100-year view Investors take a century-long bet on boom-and-bust Mexico AT THE beginning of April international investors made two whopping bets by snapping up the first ever 100-year bond denominated in euros. The first bet was that the euro would still exist a century from now. No bookie would give short… Continue reading Looking At Mexico’s Financial History
None Today
[pageview class=”PDFViewer” url=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/wp-content/plugins/PDFViewer/plugin.php?id=252″] The Wall Street Journal – Jon Hilsenrath: Slowing Growth Muddles Fed Plans The economy’s sharp first-quarter slowdown is giving Federal Reserve officials pause. The nation’s central bank pointed to cooling economic activity and reduced job-market gains in its policy statement Wednesday, underscoring uncertainty among officials about when the economy will rebound and… Continue reading The Fed Offers Little Substance In Its Statement
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – WSJ Survey: Economists Think Fed Will Wait Until September to Raise Rates The Federal Reserve will likely start raising short-term interest rates in September, according to most private economists polled in recent days by The Wall Street Journal–a significant shift away from earlier predictions… Continue reading Timing The Rate Hike
Bloomberg.com – A Market Indicator That Predicts Nothing Every now and again, a way of looking at markets suddenly gains traction. Data gets assembled, analyzed, reviewed. Eventually, it becomes the basis of traders’ decision-making process. It even can become part of Wall Street lore. The problem that arises all too often is that this approach… Continue reading “Can’t Miss” Technical Indicators