Correspondent Blog

April CPI to Add to Inflation Story Later this morning we get April CPI and the equity market hasn’t waited around to sell on the rumors. Expectations are that overall CPI will reach a ten-year high of 3.6% while core CPI is expected to spike to 2.3% versus 1.6% in March. This is the base…

April CPI and Retail Sales With a Heavy Dose of Fed Speak We wrote in this space last Monday that after the week is over we should have a good idea if April was able to outshine March as far as economic activity and while expectations were such, the reality failed to live up to…

April Employment Report Misses Badly The April Employment Report badly missed expectations of 1.0 million new jobs with just 266,000 jobs created, while the March report was revised lower from 916,000 jobs to 770,000. With the latest numbers, around 8.2 million people remain unemployed from the pandemic. The problem now, with the disappointing April numbers,…

The Tells of April About to Appear This week is filled with three reports that will quickly define the economic activity in April: the ISM Manufacturing, ISM Services, and BLS Employment Report. The ISM Manufacturing ostensibly disappointed but it was due solely to supply constraints. Large backlogs and scant inventory point to robust orders but…

April Outshines March, And We’re Not Just Talking About the Weather By the end of the week we’ll have a good idea just how strong the economy was in April. If the bevy of first-tier reports come in as expected April will outshine March as far as economic activity, not to mention its better springtime…

Treasuries Finally Acknowledge Strengthening Economy Was it the solid first quarter GDP report and the hints of more to come? Was it the resolutely dovish Fed? Was it the string of solid earnings reports? Was it the expectation of another bang-up jobs report next week? Well, perhaps it was all the above that finally caught…

Not This One But The Next FOMC Meeting The FOMC meeting concludes today but we’re not particularly interested in this meeting. Actually, we have our eyes set on the June meeting for the potential that meeting holds. Read on below for our thoughts on why it’s June and not today that may be the pivotal…

FOMC and GDP On Wednesday the FOMC Meeting concludes, and while we don’t expect any change in policy we expect to see the Fed up their characterization of the economy given the string of strong numbers since the March 17 meeting.  In the post-meeting press conference Powell is bound to be asked about whether they…

Investors Look to Next Week We mentioned at the start of the week to expect some listless, uninspired, rangebound trading given the dearth of economic data, and no Fed speak, and that’s about what we got. The 10-year Treasury opened the week yielding 1.58% and we open Friday trading around 1.55%. So, just another week…

Radio Silence With the Fed in radio silence until next week’s FOMC meeting, and with a skinny and second-tier slate of economic releases this week, the market is left to drift a bit and stay close to established ranges for now. The Fed meeting next week, first quarter GDP, and durable goods numbers will wake…

Never Short a Dull Market After last week’s full slate of first-tier economic data, and a rostrum full of Fed speakers to enlighten us, this week could be one of treading water. The Fed goes into its quiet period before the April 28 rate decision. Combine that quietness with  a slate of economic releases that…

Treasury Rally Continues Despite Strong March Numbers The market received a boatload of data yesterday that was unambiguously strong and Treasury prices curiously rallied in response.  After reaching a pandemic high yield of 1.74% on March 31, the 10-year note has rallied throughout April dipping to 1.55% yesterday. That’s a level last seen on March…