I'm not yet going to draw any broader market conclusions from the stock performance of Lyft yesterday but someone please explain to me how an IPO that is 20 times oversubscribed can trade below its IPO price on its 2nd day of trading? Very strange. The Reserve Bank of Australia held rates at its record low of 1.5% as expected. In the statement they covered the …
ISM mfr’g up, Markit mfr’g down
The March ISM manufacturing index rose 1.1 pts to 55.3 off the lowest level since November 2016 and that was above the estimate of 54.5. After falling by 2.7 pts in February, new orders rebounded by 1.9 pts to 57.4. Backlogs though did the reverse in giving back what it gained last month. Backlogs are just above 50 at 50.4. Export orders weakened by 1.1 pts to 51.7, …
Retail sales, eh
February retail sales fell across the board unexpectedly but upward revisions to January helped to offset most of the weakness. For the core rate of spending which excludes auto, gasoline and building material sales, they fell .2% in February vs the estimate of up .3% but January was revised up by 6 tenths, so a push. If we take out just auto’s and gasoline, sales …
The market has already cut by 70 bps/China saves the world!?
While some are calling for the Fed to "immediately" cut the fed funds rate by 50 bps, the US Treasury market has already 'cut' the average 30 yr mortgage rate by 70 bps over the past 4 months. Mission accomplished then and the housing market is already showing signs of responding. Maybe a rate cut would help incentivize more purchases of auto's but loan terms have …
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Inflation, income, spending
The government shutdown is still resulting in some older data releases. Today's PCE inflation report is one of them. In January the headline PCE rose 1.4% y/o/y as expected and which is a slowdown from the 1.8% print in December. The core rate was higher by 1.8% y/o/y, one tenth less than expected but January was revised to the magic 2% level in December. That 1.8% …
The Fed and some overseas goings on
NY Fed President John Williams says it's different this time. With regards to the yield curve, "There's a lot of reasons to think that it has been a recession predictor for reasons in the past that kind of don't apply today." He believes the US economy is in "a very good place" and "I'm not as worried about a recession as some of my colleagues in the private sector. I …
Home sales in February
February pending home sales (contract signings) fell 1% m/o/m and that was a bit more than the forecasted decline of .5%. Also, January was revised down by 3 tenths. The notable sales drop came from the Midwest which saw a fall of 7.2%. Northeast sales fell by .8% (where most of my focus is this Spring with no SALT deduction). Sales rose slightly in the South and West …
Claims/GDP revised again
Initial jobless claims totaled 211k, 9k less than expected and last week was revised down by 5k to 216k (as part of annual revisions). This downtick brings the 4 week average lower to 217k from 221k last week and that’s the lowest since mid January. Delayed by a week, continuing claims rose 13k after a similar drop in the week prior. Bottom line, as long as we keep …
China/EM/NIRP
As Mnuchin and Lighthizer are now in Beijing to further work on a deal with China, Reuters is reporting that it's still unlikely that all the tariffs will go away. They are quoting a US official as saying "Some tariffs will stay. There's going to be some give on that, but we're not going to get rid of all the tariffs. We can't." As it seems the market has priced in 'a …
Mario’s coming around?/Yields/Sentiment/Other
Mario Draghi might be finally listening to me but grudgingly and not fully understanding. He said today in Frankfurt, "If necessary, we need to reflect on possible measures that can preserve the favorable implications of negative rates for the economy, while mitigating the side effects, if any. That said, low bank profitability is not an inevitable consequence of …
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Peter is the Chief Investment Officer at Bleakley Advisory Group and is a CNBC contributor.