The number of job openings in June rose a touch m/o/m in June. They totaled 6.662mm, up a bit from 6.659mm in May. Hirings fell by 96k likely reflecting the difficulty finding people and the hiring rate ticked down by a tenth to 3.8%. The number of quitters fell but the quit rate held at the highest in this expansion which shows the confidence that job hoppers have in …
VIX/BoJ regime change/Europe
The VIX is back to 11.05 and even had a 10 handle this morning. Go back to January 26th the last time it was this low. Also, in Friday's CFTC data for the week ended last Tuesday, the net short position in VIX futures reached the lowest level since late December. Lastly, the Daily Sentiment Index is down to 8 which means that there are 92% that are bearish on VIX. …
Hopefully this is how it plays out
Here is a link to Google Trends using the word 'tariffs' and likely reflects the belief that some deal will come from all of the noise as 'tariffs' searches topped out in March, https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=tariffs&geo=US. After attending the annual Camp Kotok fishing trip over the weekend, my sense from conversations is we get a Mexico trade deal …
Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 8/3
POSITIVES 1) July payrolls grew by 157k, 25k below expectations but was more than offset by a combined upward revision in the two prior months of 59k. The private sector added 170k, 20k less than expected but June alone was revised up by 32k. I did forget to mention in my previous note on this though, the service sector added the least amount of jobs since …
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Jobs
July payrolls grew by 157k, 25k below expectations but was more than offset by a combined upward revision in the two prior months of 59k. The private sector added 170k, 20k less than expected but June alone was revised up by 32k. The household survey said 389k new jobs were created (very volatile month to month) which combined with the 105k increase in the labor force …
Time to utilize another tactic?
I preferred the headlines this week that there were fresh high level talks between China and the US, Vice Premier Liu and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, not the new ones over the past 24 hours. In response to yesterday's story that the US was going to raise the tax rate of 10% to 25% on $200b of Chinese goods of new tariffs, today China's Ministry of Commerce said "China …
Time to go back to sleep
It’s time to go back to sleep. The FOMC statement was as dull as can be and we can be sure that was intentional. Aside from modestly updating some of the commentary on the economy and inflation with tiny tweaks, nothing else changed. The labor market is strong and inflation is at their target which means they will hike again in September and maybe in December as the …
US Manufacturing
The US ISM manufacturing index for July moderated by 2.1 pts to 58.1 which is a 3 month low and puts it below the average year to date of 59.1. Of note, new orders fell 3.8 pts to 60.2, the lowest since May 2017, backlogs dropped by 5.4 pts to 54.7, the least since November 2017 and export orders fell 1 pt to the slowest since October 2017. Supplier deliveries did …
Jobs
ADP said private sector payrolls grew by 219k in July, 33k more than expected and June was revised up by 4k to 181k. The service sector contributed 177k, the most since January led by education/health services and the goods side added 42k with another good month of hiring in manufacturing of 23k. Smoothing out the monthly noise puts the 3 month average job gain of …
Another wild day in JGB’s and US home buyers are paying more
Another day and another discussion about Japanese bonds because oh man, what a night. With the BoJ now saying that they will tolerate a 20 bps band around the zero yield on 10 yr JGB's from 10 bps previously, that was just an open invitation for a test. Overnight the 10 yr yield spiked by 7 bps to .13%. That is the highest level since January 2016 and compares with …
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Peter is the Chief Investment Officer at Bleakley Advisory Group and is a CNBC contributor.