I'm going to be traveling when payroll report is to be released so not sure if I'll be able to immediately comment. Either way, if you told me the number right now I'd still have to flip a coin as to how the market will respond. …
Claims/Trade/Draghi
Initial jobless claims totaled 218k, 3k more than expected and last week was revised up by 3k to also 218k. The 4 week average did fall to 215k from 218k last week as a print of 228k dropped out. Continuing claims rose by 20k after falling by a like amount in the week prior. Bottom line, the 218k print is exactly what the one year average is. While claims are a very …
The morning stuff
I'm still of the opinion that we're not going to be so stupid to implement those Mexican tariffs but after yesterday's messaging from the White House meeting, the Mexican peso is lower by .6% vs the dollar and is approaching Monday's low close. Talks will resume today. In yesterday's II data, we saw another decline in Bulls and again, most went to only the …
US services, both ISM and Markit
The May ISM services PMI surprised to the upside, rising 1.4 pts to 56.9 from April. The estimate was a slight drop to 55.4 and the print is about spot on with the year to date average of 57. The components though were more mixed and some squares need to be circled. New orders rose .5 pts after falling by .9 pts in April but backlogs fell 2.5 pts to match the lowest …
ADP saw sharp drop in pace of hiring
ADP said only a net 27k private sector jobs were created in May, well less than the forecast of 185k and vs 271k in April (revised from 275k). Again, most of the job hiring weakness came from small businesses, especially those with less than 20 employees. In this spot, 52k jobs were lost. The overall service sector added 71k jobs, the slowest rate of increase since …
‘Insurance cut’?/A bunch of data
With rate cut odds now where they are (62% by July and almost 100% of two this year by December), the euro heavy dollar index is at a 7 week low and gold is rising to a 15 week high. I do want to chime in on the Fed discussion about an 'insurance rate cut' because some members keep referring to the experience of 1995 and 1998. In 1995, the US economy was only in the …
Powell speaks/Gosplan
There were a few interesting aspects of Powell’s speech, which was very academic and theoretical and I’ll follow with my 2 cents. The first thing he did was to immediately address the elephant in the room, that being the economic impact of the heightened trade tariffs. He said “We do not know how or when these issues will be resolved. We are closely monitoring the …
So now we go after our own?/RBA and other banks
So now the US government is going after our most successful companies for being too successful. The companies that blazed new trails that we never knew existed. The companies that employ hundreds of thousands of employees and have provided services to the US consumer that have all made our lives more efficient and lower cost and with Facebook and Google, we get them …
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ISM manufacturing softens further
The May ISM manufacturing index fell to 52.1 from 52.8 and that was 1 pt less than expected. It’s also the lowest since October 2016, right before the election. New orders did rise 1 pt m/o/m but only after falling by 5.7 pts last month to the lowest since December. Also, only 12 industries saw an increase in new orders vs 14 in April. Backlogs, a precursor to future …
We now have a Wikipedia page for it/Data/Gold/Greece
For better or worse, you know you've made it in some fashion when you get your own Wikipedia page. Trump Tariffs now has a page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs. With respect China's position paper they released over the weekend, the Art of Compromise is seemingly the only way a deal gets done. On Mexico, I'm hopeful that we won't be so stupid to address a …
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Peter is the Chief Investment Officer at Bleakley Advisory Group and is a CNBC contributor.