Developed Countries
Our latest views on the recent increase in Treasury yields and some key things to watch at next week’s FOMC meeting.
The UK labor market remains far too tight to expect wage growth to slow to levels consistent with the Bank of England inflation target. A true recession with rising unemployment is needed to finally slay the UK inflation beast. 2024 rate cuts are off the table, with the central bank having to keep monetary policy tighter for longer than markets expect and the UK economy now rebounding. We recommend downgrading UK gilts to underweight in global bond portfolios, while also looking for opportunities to buy the British pound on pullbacks versus the euro, Canadian dollar and Swedish krona.
The advanced estimates for US real GDP suggest that economic growth slowed meaningfully from 3.4% in Q4 2023 to 1.6% in Q1 2024 on an annualized basis, significantly below expectations of 2.5%. That said, the details of the report were less gloomy. While…
Throughout this cycle, US housing has defied expectations. Overall home prices have never fallen since the pandemic, even as the Fed has conducted its second most aggressive tightening campaign in history. Today, home price growth remains robust, running at…
Equity markets reacted negatively to the preliminary Q1 US GDP on Thursday, with the S&P 500 shedding 0.5%. Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury yield rose 6 bps in response to the stronger-than-expected core PCE inflation print for Q1. Importantly,…
Tuesday’s Australian inflation release came in hotter than anticipated. Quarter-on-quarter headline inflation increased from 0.6% in Q4 2023 to 1% in the first quarter of this year, above expectations of 0.8%. Although annual inflation declined from 4.1% to…
Results of Germany’s IFO business climate survey for April sent a positive message on Tuesday. The overall Business Climate Index increased from 87.9 to 89.4, beating expectations of 88.9. Assessments of both the current business situation (increased from…
The resilience of the US economy has led economists to consistently revise up their consensus real GDP growth forecast for 2024, which now stands at 2.4%, up from 0.6% in July 2023. Conversely, the 2024 consensus Eurozone growth estimate has been trending…
USD/JPY has appreciated by over 10% so far in 2024, making the yen the worst performing G10 currency year-to-date. This cross has also surpassed the 150 threshold which historically is the level at which the Bank of Japan begins to intervene. Today, it stands…
Preliminary S&P PMIs for the US showed the manufacturing index declined to contraction territory of 49.9 from 51.9, falling short of expectations of 52. The services PMI also disappointed coming in at 50.9, versus expectations it would improve from 51.7…