Developed Countries
Several pieces of data were released for the US on Thursday. US durable goods orders growth slowed from 0.2% to 0.1% in May, beating expectations of a 0.5% contraction. However other components of the report disappointed consensus estimates. Durable goods…
Right after the pandemic, many US homeowners locked in mortgages at extremely low rates. When interest rates rose, these homeowners refused to sell, as moving to a new home would result in an interest rate reset. In turn this resulted in a severe housing…
According to BCA Research’s Counterpoint service, absent China’s exponential credit growth, China’s trend growth rate will fall to 4 percent and the world’s trend growth rate will fall to sub-3 percent. This will impede structural rallies in the Chinese stock…
The consensus soft-landing narrative is wrong. The US will fall into a recession in late 2024 or early 2025. We were tactically bullish on stocks most of last year, turned neutral earlier this year, and are going underweight today. We conservatively expect the S&P 500 to drop to 3750 during the coming recession.
Australia’s inflation for May was released on Tuesday. Annual headline CPI increased from 3.6% in April to 4%, outpacing expectations of 3.8%. Trimmed-mean inflation also increased from 4.1% to 4.4%. Individual components diverged. Food and non-alcoholic…
Our Global Investment Strategy team often highlights the job openings-to-unemployed ratio as a gauge of the labor market’s slack. This indicator climbed to over 2 job openings per unemployed person in 2022, as labor shortages plagued the US economy due to…
According to BCA Research’s European Investment Strategy service, the BoE will start cutting rates in September, but the pace of subsequent rate cuts will be modest until a recession engulfs Western economies in early 2025. The UK’s monetary policy remains…
According to the results of the latest German IFO survey, overall sentiment deteriorated slightly in June. The IFO Business Climate index declined from 89.3 in May to 88.6 in June, disappointing expectations of a modest amelioration to 89.6. The IFO…
Canada’s headline inflation rate for May surprised to the upside on Tuesday. The 0.6% month-on-month print and 2.9% year-on-year increase came in above expectations of 0.3% m/m and 2.6% y/y, respectively. Both measures increased from April. Core inflation…
Historically, there has been a tight inverse relationship between the price of gold and US real rates. Elevated interest rates raise the opportunity cost of holding gold, making the yellow metal relatively less attractive for investors. Yet this…