Tag Archive: CPI

Ueda’s Comments Weigh on Yen as the Market Awaits US CPI

Overview: The US CPI has become one of the most important high-frequency economic reports for the capital markets. The dollar is going into the report narrowly mixed against the G10 currencies. Comments by BOJ Governor Ueda about the weakness in consumption of non-durable goods was seen by some as reducing the likelihood of a change in policy next week.

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Ueda’s Comments Knock the Yen Back, while the Euro Flirts with $1.08

Overview: The US dollar is mixed today. The dollar-bloc currencies and the Scandis are enjoying a slightly firmer tone, while the euro and sterling are edging higher in European turnover.

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Soft US CPI Today Paves Way for Fed Pivot Tomorrow

Overview: The US dollar is trading softer against all the G10 currencies ahead of what is expected to be a soft November CPI report, which paves the way for a pivot by the FOMC tomorrow. It is expected to signal that policy may be sufficiently restrictive and anticipate being able to cut rates next year more than it thought in September, even if not as much as is priced into the market. Among emerging market currencies, central European currencies...

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Dollar Recovers After Losses Extended in Asia

Overview: On the back of lower interest rates, the greenback's slide was extended in early Asia Pacific turnover, but it has recovered. As North American trading begins, the dollar is firmer against all the G10 currencies but the New Zealand dollar, which has been aided by the hawkish hold of the central bank, and an immaterial gain in the Swiss franc. Emerging market currencies are mixed. Central European currencies and the Mexican peso are...

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Corrective Forces Help the Dollar Stabilize

Overview: Corrective forces helped the dollar stabilize yesterday and it enjoys a firmer today. The euro has slipped below $1.09, and the dollar has resurfaced above JPY149.00. The FOMC minutes seem dated by the more than 30 bp decline in the US 10-year yield, the 7% rally in the S&P 500 and roughly 3% drop in the Dollar Index. The implied year-end 2024 Fed funds rate has fallen by 10 bp to 4.51% (5.33% currently). The Japanese government...

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Is the Market Putting on Risk Ahead of the Weekend?

Overview: The US dollar is trading with a softer bias. Among the G10- currencies, only the euro and Swiss franc are the laggards and are nearly flat. In shifting expectations, the market sees the Reserve Bank of Australia as the most likely to hike rates again, while the swaps market appears to be bringing forward cuts by the European Central Bank and the Bank of Canada. The Australian dollar is the strongest G10 currency today and this week. After...

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Macro: Sep CPI stuck at 3.7% YOY

The most anticipated release of the week came in … “Unchanged” or sticky stuck from the August at 3.7% yoy. But it’s worth mentioning as we will discuss below that this is up from June CPI which was 3.09% yoy. Core CPI which excludes food and energy because of their volatility sits at 4.13% yoy down from 4.39% last month. Let’s look under the hood a bit because headlines will mention “sticky” CPI and there are some reasons that CPI will indeed...

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Market Awaits US Data and Leadership

Overview:  The dollar staged a major technical reversal yesterday, in a dramatic reaction to a considerably weaker JOLTs report than expected, spurring a large drop in US interest rates. And this is despite press reports that the participation rate in the survey is half of what was three years ago. We suspect the price action said as much about market positioning as it did about the data. The path to the US jobs data on Friday goes through...

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Weekly Market Pulse: Good News, Bad News

One thing I can tell you for certain about last week’s big rally on Thursday and Friday: there were a lot of people who desperately wanted a good excuse to buy stocks. And buy they did after a better-than-expected CPI report Thursday morning, pushing the S&P 500 up nearly 6% on the week with all of that coming on Thursday and Friday.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Just A Little Volatility

Markets were rather volatile last week. That’s a wild understatement and what passes for sarcasm in the investment business. Stocks started the week waiting with bated (baited?) breath for the inflation reports of the week. It isn’t surprising that the market is focused firmly on the rear view mirror for clues about the future since Jerome Powell has made it plain that is his plan, goofy as it is.

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US CPI Data Release Update

It is easy to get caught up in data releases. The media is keen to read a lot into them, hoping it will offer some sense of what is really going on, so often the news is about numbers just announced or expectations for what one economic measure will show from one month to the next. 

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Weekly Market Pulse: No News Is…

Nothing happened last week. Stocks and bonds and commodities continued to trade and move around in price but there was no news to which those movements could be attributed. The economic news was a trifle and what there was told us exactly nothing new about the economy.

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Is it All Really about Today’s US CPI Print?

Overview: The US dollar is trading with a heavier bias ahead of the July CPI report. The intraday momentum indicators are overextended, and this could set the stage for the dollar to recover in North America.

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Weekly Market Pulse: There Is No Certainty In Investing

Investors crave certainty. They want to know that there are definitive signals for them to follow as they adjust their investments to fit the current market and economy. They want to know that A leads to B leads to C. Tea leaf readers are always in high demand on Wall Street and they continue to find employment despite their almost universally dismal track record.

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Eurodollar Futures Interpretation Is Everywhere

Consumer confidence in Germany never really picked up all that much last year. Conflating CPIs with economic condition, this divergence proved too big of a mystery. When the German GfK, for example, perked up only a tiny bit around September and October 2021, the color of consumer prices clouded judgement and interpretation of what had always been a damning situation.

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Market Pulse: Mid-Year Update

Note: This update is longer than usual but I felt a comprehensive review was necessary. The Federal Reserve panicked last week and spooked investors into the worst week for stocks since the onset of COVID in March 2020. The S&P 500 is now firmly in bear market territory but that is a fraction of the pain in stocks and other risky assets.

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Curve Inversion 101: US CPI Politics Up Front, China PPI Down(ing) The Back

While the world fixated on the US CPI, it was other “inflation” data from across the Pacific that is telling the real economic story. Having conflated the former with a red-hot economy, the fact American consumer prices aren’t tied to the actual economic situation has been lost in the shuffle of the FOMC’s hawkishness, with markets obliged to price wrong-way Jay.

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It’s Not Nothing, It’s Everything (including crypto)

Markets got aggressive long before the FOMC did. Everything, and I mean everything, has been trending the other way. Jay Powell says inflation risks are most pressing when markets have consistently priced the opposite for a whole lot longer.

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Prices As Curative Punishment

It wasn’t exactly a secret, though the raw data doesn’t ever tell you why something might’ve changed in it. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, confirmed by industry sources, US new car sales absolutely tanked in May 2022.

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Update The Conflict of Interest Rate(s)

What changed? For over a month, the Treasury market had the Fed and its rate hiking figured out. Rising recession risks had been confirmed by almost every piece of incoming data, including, importantly, labor data.

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