Weekly Market Update

With the Iran war looming over all aspects of trading, we finish the week with an important, albeit dated, report in the form of January Personal Income and Spending. The Fed’s preferred inflation measure is the headline feature of the report, but the personal spending numbers will get a once over too given the softening…

Treasuries have been taking their lead from oil markets this week and yesterday that led to a dizzying roundtrip between losses and gains as news of a US warship successfully escorting a tanker through the Straits of Hormuz brought a relief rally and drop in oil prices.  Then that news was taken down and replaced…

Friday’s big miss on jobs and lackluster January retail sales didn’t provide the spark for a Treasury rally as investors took the confusing jobs report and decided to worry more about inflation risk from the Iran war that weekend events showed is not going away anytime soon. Oil surging 70% in one week will do…

February nonfarm payrolls fell 92 thousand, missing by a wide margin the 55 thousand expected and 126 thousand gained in January (revised lower from an initial 130 thousand).   Two-month revisions cut 69 thousand jobs from previous estimates with December revised 65 thousand lower and January 4 thousand lower. Given the level of disparity between…

With the war moving into Day 5, and financial markets finally taking notice, we find ourselves with another round of February employment numbers before the big BLS report on Friday.  As for today, we have some privately sourced labor market data with the ADP Employment Change Report and a little later the ISM Services Index…

We enter what is typically the busiest week of any month as far as first-tier economic data is concerned, headlined by the jobs report on Friday, but this week the economic data will spar with geo-political developments for investor attention. The weekend war news creates additional issues and uncertainties that the market must react to…

Questions continue to swirl regarding the ultimate impact of AI on the economy, and that has kept equities from breaking to new highs. Another blowout earnings report from Nvidia wasn’t enough to rekindle animal spirits. Those risk asset struggles continue to aid Treasuries and with geo-political risk looming, there are more Treasury bids waiting in…

President Trump’s first State of the Union Address in his second term was a longwinded affair, longest ever actually, but it didn’t break new ground and didn’t relent from tariffs being a centerpiece of trade policy, despite last week’s Supreme Court ruling.  Of the 1 hour 45-minute speech, 8.5% was spent on national security, 6.6%…

This week was supposed to be something of a placeholder with mostly second-tier economic releases but the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling from Friday adds an element of intrigue into the week. With the Court declaring the use of IEEPA to implement tariffs as unconstitutional, markets are poised for a reaction from the White House. While…

With geo-political issues swirling we end the holiday-shortened week with a pair of headline grabbing reports: Fourth Quarter GDP and Personal Income and Spending. We discuss the results of both of those reports below and look ahead to next week where the Conference Board’s February look at consumer confidence headlines a second-tier list of releases….

If you thought after a week that brought you a jobs report, an inflation report, and Retail Sales that this week would be a little less intense, you’re right! Most of what we’ll see this week is second tier and/or somewhat stale and what we do care about will be arriving on Friday. So, market…

With the brief government shutdown from two weeks ago, we had a unique experience with a jobs and inflation report in the same week. While both are not likely to alter a rate decision in March, it was a curious development to see the key reports for both the Fed’s dual mandates arrive within days…