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June US jobs data – surprisingly stable
Yes, its out; the US non-farm payrolls for June. In between love island, the World Cup footie and what counts as financial porn (endless tit-for tat negotiations on tariffs and Brexit) you might have missed these. For those fretting about interest rate rises on an overheating employment market, I shouldn’t worry too much that it […]
Continue readingDo they know something? Informative conformity and stocks
The herding instinct is strong in markets. Solomon Asch would characterise this as ‘informative conformity’ where the participant would disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes and yield to the group think. In Asch’s experiments, the results were remarkable, particularly given the exclusion of outside variables beyond the comparative data (the height of the columns […]
Continue readingWhining about US winning
So if Trump’s tariffs are going top hurt the US so much why is the US dollar going up by so much? If Trump’s tax reductions are going to increase the budget deficit, why are currency markets so unconcerned? It is because currency markets understand Trump is going to win. His tax cuts are […]
Continue readingGDP driven rate increases in the US threatens to pummel an already challenged ECB QE policy
Equity markets were widely reported to have bounced on Friday after the solid May private sector job growth, albeit the accompanying rise in average hourly wage growth presages another rate rise by the Fed. With EU’s grip on its southern flank unravelling as friendly regimes in Spain and Italy are replaced however, the prospects of […]
Continue readingApril US employment growth – Goldilocks
There seems to be a whole industry that has emerged to pore over the monthly US non-farm payroll numbers, but ultimately there are only two things of interest. Are US corporate sacking enough employees to signal an impending recession, or employing so many and paying so much as to spook the Fed into tightening monetary […]
Continue readingWeaning consumers off the debt fix – maybe
Well that seemed short-lived. Perhaps the bounce in US equity markets on the February non-farms was just a one day wonder. The numbers however, weren’t too shabby for equity prices; the combination of a better than expected net job growth (including upward revision in the January guesstimate), but with a lower pace of average wage […]
Continue readingAre equity markets expensive?
This is a regular question posed by investors and market commentators, but in many ways is also the most meaningless. This is because the relative merits of equities as an asset class owes more to the ebb and flow of liquidity to goose demand, rather than some theoretical notion of a ‘correct’ valuation that should […]
Continue reading“US Economy added only 148k jobs in December” …… Oh really?
A new year it may be, but don’t expect much improvement in the headline analysis of spurious government statistics. On Friday we had the December non-farm payroll figures. The headline net job additions was ‘only’ +148k in the month, which CNBC, the WSJ and other main media were quick to inform us was below the […]
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