Weekly Market Update

Cooler heads seem to be prevailing in the Powell/Subpoena dust up, and inflation seems to be cooling a bit too, according to the latest CPI release. We talk about that report in more detail below, along with a glance at the just released November Advance Retail Sales Report. The Supreme Court is set to issue…

This was supposed to be Inflation Week, but our regularly scheduled programming has been pre-empted by an assault against the Fed’s independence. In a remarkable video released yesterday (watch here), Chair Powell revealed the Fed had been served Grand Jury subpoenas on Friday, ostensibly over statements Powell made to Congress last June regarding the Federal…

Examining Bond Portfolio Trends: Fourth Quarter 2025 Beginning in May 2012, we started tracking  portfolio trends of our bond accounting customers here at SouthState Securities.  At present, we account for over 130 client portfolios with a combined book value of $11.9 billion (not including SouthState Bank’s portfolio), or $91 million on average per portfolio.  Twelve…

December nonfarm payrolls rose 50 thousand, missing the 70 thousand expected and 56 thousand gained in November (revised lower from an initial 64 thousand).   Two-month revisions cut 76 thousand jobs from previous estimates with October revised 68 thousand lower and November 8 thousand jobs lower. Private sector job growth was 37 thousand which was…

So far, the weekend events in Venezuela have failed to catalyze meaningful volatility, perhaps an indication that markets remain fixated on the state of the labor market to drive yields from here. To that extent, the rest of this week will begin to deliver some of the requisite data points that have either been missing…

Welcome to 2026, and amazingly enough, to some fresh data that will be on display this week, headlined by the December jobs report on Friday. Before then the data starts to flow with today’s ISM Manufacturing Survey for December and a plethora of other reports that have been either missing or delayed since the government…

As we note below, we will see a jobs report this week, but it will be from September, and it will be released on Thursday. When we get our hands on other delayed reports is still a guess, but we should get updates this week on a calendar of revised release dates. There’s also plenty…

With several Fed officials recently voicing more concern over inflation and less about the economy/jobs, odds for a rate cut in December have plummeted from a 96% probability a month ago to a toss-up at this point (see graph below). That shift contributed to the tech-heavy selling yesterday in stocks, which coincidentally has been the…

Restarting the government may happen very soon but receiving delayed reports could take some time. The table below offers possible report release dates given varying government reopening times. The House is expected to vote on the Senate bill today and presumably a passed bill to President Trump’s desk today or tomorrow. Given that legislative outlook…

With seven Dems breaking ranks, and one Independent, the Senate voted 60-40 to advance a short-term funding bill that could potentially reopen the government as soon as this week, but a final Senate vote is still needed and if passed faces an uncertain outcome in the House, so plenty of steps still remain. Even if…

While we don’t have a BLS Nonfarm Payrolls Report today we will have the preliminary University of Michigan Sentiment Survey for November. Excited? Well, me neither. Also, while the Supreme Court hearing didn’t go particularly well for the Trump administration, it will most likely be a few weeks before a decision is handed down, and…

While we won’t have a BLS Nonfarm Payrolls Report on Friday, for the second straight month, the privately issued ADP Employment Report provided plenty of labor-related news this morning. ADP, after surprising with job losses in September, beat expectations in October (read more below). The ISM Services Index for October will be the next report…