Following up on Craig Fuller's call in March, the CEO of FreightWaves, that the transportation industry was headed for a recession, Cass Freight's April shipments index out yesterday showed a 2.6% fall from March and down .5% y/o/y. They said "Freight was slowing even before the war in Europe again, but the effects of the additional surge of inflation and recent …

PPI sticky and Jobs data as good as it gets
Headline PPI in April rose .5% m/o/m as expected but after a two tenths upward revision to March to up 1.6%. The core rate was higher by .4%, less than the estimate of up .7% but March was revised up by 2 tenths to 1.2%. If we take out food, energy and trade, the increase m/o/m of .6% was as forecasted and March was left unchanged up .9%. Versus last year, headline …
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The Fed gets an A+ for this/Yields/Sentiment/Tether
While we await to see the Federal Reserve's success in taming the consumer price inflation that they did their part in contributing to, there is one thing they've had tremendous success with. They get an A+ for creating asset price inflation over the many years and are now doing a bang up job with stoking asset price deflation, another A+. We had the revaluation …
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10 yr auction, eh
The 10 yr note auction was on the softer side but with some mixed characteristics. The yield of 2.943% was about 1.5 bps above the when issued pricing just prior. The bid to cover of 2.49 was a touch below the one yr average 2.51. Direct and indirect bidders too down 88.5% of the auction, just above the 12 month average of 86%. Bottom line, the higher pricing was …

MBA data
With another acceleration higher in the average 30 yr mortgage rate to 5.53% from 5.36%, the highest in 23 years, people rushed to lock in on the purchase side as applications rose 4.5% w/o/w but still are down 7.7% y/o/y. Now they are not doing this because there are bargains out there, they are doing this in a race against the rates. Refi’s fell another 2% to …

Rate of change topping out but will remain very sticky
Headline CPI in April rose .3% m/o/m, one tenth more than expected and the core rate was up by .6% m/o/m, two tenths more than expected. On a y/o/y basis, consumer inflation is up 8.3% y/o/y and 6.2% y/o/y, a slight comedown from the 8.5% and 6.5% y/o/y gains seen in March but we know this gets to the tougher comparison story, and nothing more. And this comes with the …
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Quick read
Ahead of the April CPI and PPI today and tomorrow we have certainly seen a pullback in some commodity prices (mostly ex food, natural gas and gasoline prices) and inflation breakevens but much of this coincided with the Shanghai shutdowns. The shutdowns began on March 28th and was expected to run until April 5th. It instead was extended on April 4th and the CRB raw …

Good morning
So we are now beginning to see the next step of how an economic slowdown cycle begins. We've had the macro shocks of inflation, supply disruptions and war and now we see signs that cost cuts are coming as it won't just be price increases that will be used for companies to regain their lost profit margins. The CNBC story yesterday on Uber where the CEO told its …

Rates/Likely July/Dollar/Credit
The key level to watch in the US 10 yr yield is 3.24% as that was the closing high in Q4 2018 (November) when the last time the Fed was double tightening. You get above that and we're looking at levels last seen in 2011. Today's selloff in bonds is again global as yields jumped in Asia and in Europe. The German 10 yr bund yield is up by 4 bps to 1.17%, the highest …

Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 5/6
Positives 1)Payrolls in April grew by 428k, 58k more than expected but mostly offset by a downward revision to the two prior months of 39k. 2)Continuing claims, delayed by a week in its reporting, fell to 1.38mm from 1.4mm and that is a new 50+ yr low. 3)The Fed meeting was a non event in terms of making new news. As people got way over the skis in thinking …
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