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In the world of mankind, there will not be a statement without any position, nor a remark without any purpose.
Inflation, exchange rates, and the economy shape the policy decisions of central banks; the attitudes and words of central bank officials also influence the actions of market traders.
Money makes the world go round and currency is a permanent commodity. The forex market is full of surprises and expectations.
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I have 5 years of experience in financial analysis, especially in aspects of macro developments and medium and long-term trend judgment. My focus is maily on the developments of the Middle East, emerging markets, coal, wheat and other agricultural products.
BeingTrader chief Trading Coach & Speaker, 8+ years of experience in the forex market trading mainly XAUUSD, EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, and Crude Oil. A confident trader and analyst who aims to explore various opportunities and guide investors in the market. As an analyst I am looking to enhance the trader’s experience by supporting them with sufficient data and signals.
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On August 26, San Francisco Fed President Daly said that with inflation falling back, there is no need to continue tightening monetary policy. It is time to adjust the policy as the labor market is fully balanced.
WASHINGTON (Aug 26): The "low-hiring, low-firing" approach that U.S. businesses currently take to their employment decisions is unlikely to last, Richmond Federal Reserve President Thomas Barkin said in newly released comments, citing the risk that firms could resort to layoffs if the economy weakens.
Concerns about the job market have intensified at the U.S. central bank in recent weeks and are a core reason for why Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a speech on Friday that interest rate cuts were needed to prevent any further and unwanted erosion in U.S. joblessness.
It isn't happening yet as firms remain reluctant to fire employees even as they've become more conservative in filling positions, Barkin said in comments to the Bloomberg "Odd Lots" podcast, which was recorded on Friday at a Fed economic symposium and released on Monday.
But "either demand will continue and people will start hiring again, or you will start to see layoffs," Barkin said. "We are in a low-hiring, low-firing, mode. That does not feel like something that is going to persist. It is going to move left or it is going to move right."
The unemployment rate has risen steadily this year to the current 4.3%, but that has been driven by a combination of slowed hiring and an increasing number of people looking for work, while layoffs have remained at low levels.
Protecting against downside risks to the job market is one reason reductions in the Fed's benchmark policy rate are now all but certain to begin at the central bank's Sept. 17-18 meeting.
Barkin said he was taking a "test-and-learn" approach to rate reductions, likely pointing to his support for an initial quarter-percentage-point rate reduction as opposed to the larger half-percentage-point cut some analysts say would be appropriate. Inflation, he noted, remains a half percentage point above the Fed's 2% target, and rate cuts might over time contribute to stronger inflation by boosting demand for housing and other items.
Yet Barkin, a voting member of the Fed's rate-setting policy committee this year, said confidence in easing price pressures has grown, particularly as disinflation has become more broadly evident - not just focused on the goods sector.
"We have had very low readings for four months in a row, and it is now across the basket, whereas six months ago, eight months ago, it was just in goods," Barkin said. "So the concern about inflation reaccelerating has definitely come down."
Most of those systems rely on a cycle of long-leading, then short-leading indicators, followed by coincident, short-lagging, long-lagging, and finally mid-cycle indicators — and then around to long leading indicators again. But I also have a fundamentals-based system, which I call “the consumer nowcast.” That is the subject of this post.
The consumer nowcast looks at the ability of consumers — 70% of the economy — to spend. Historically, when that ability is temporarily tapped out, and consumers pull back, a recession quickly follows. I have been writing about this “consumer nowcast” system for almost 20 years, when it did not signal a problem in 2005-06, but did signal trouble in 2007.
In a nutshell, here's how the consumer nowcast works: to spend, consumers have to be making more money in real, inflation-adjusted terms. If they can't do that, they can refinance debt at lower interest rates, thus freeing up additional cash to spend. If they can't do that, they can cash in appreciating assets like houses and stocks. But if all of those avenues are closed off, consumers have no choice but to pull back; and when they spend less, manufacturers and suppliers quickly notice, cutting back production and supply; and a recession ensues.
To begin with, real consumer earnings, whether measured as real average hourly earnings, or real aggregate payrolls, have increased substantially (by 3% and 5.7%, respectively) since their temporary bottom in June 2022 when gas was $5/gallon:
Looking back 60 years to the inception of the series, so long as aggregate payrolls are increasing more than consumer inflation, no recession has occurred:
It is only once inflation has caught up with payrolls that consumers have cut back and a recession has started. Except for the pandemic lockdowns, the lag between the real payroll peak and the onset of recession has varied between 4 and 10 months:
The consumer nowcast further posits that, if wages aren't going up, do consumers have other options, like refinancing or equity withdrawal, to fund new purchases?
So let's consider the ability of consumers to refinance debt or cash in appreciating assets to free up cash to spend, in case there was a reversal in real earning power.
For most of the past two years, the refinancing option was firmly shut down. In the past several months, with mortgage rates near their two-year lows, refinancing is showing signs of life again:
Even so, refinancing at lower interest rates is not at this point a significant driver of new consumer cash.
But appreciating assets are also on the cusp of opening up a new source of consumer cash. Here's what house prices as measured by the Case-Shiller (BLUE) and FHFA (red) indexes look like:
And here is the median price for an existing home:
All of these are at record highs, which means cash out refinancing is once again an option. According to Freddie Mac, during the first half of 2024
“around 85% of conventional refinance originations were cash-out refinances. This shift is largely due to higher rates, which have reduced the number of rate-and-term refinances and are pushing up the share of cash-out refinances, even as total refinance volumes remain low.”
Finally, real retail sales have declined almost relentlessly since spring of 2022 and are at recessionary YoY levels. But on the other hand, the similar measure of real personal spending on goods is positive, slightly exceeding levels at which recessions have started previously. This is likely an artifact of the outsized contribution that the CPI shelter component is making to that measure, vs. a much lower shelter component in real personal spending:
And real consumer spending on services, at 2.8% higher YoY, is still growing at rates rarely seen since the turn of the Millennium:
As a result, the personal savings rate, at 3.4%, has not been rising at all, and indeed is closer to its all-time lows:
This means that consumers are confident in terms of voting with their wallets.
The big deceleration in consumer inflation since its peak, along with $5 gas prices, in June 2022, has been reflected in significant increases in real average hourly wages and real aggregate non-supervisory payrolls.
Consumers’ ability to refinance debt at lower rates is stirring. The record highs in both stock prices and real estate prices have opened the doors to another round of cashing in stock options and cash-out home equity refinancing.
In other words, not only are all the avenues for increased consumer spending not shut off, all but one of them are wide open, and even the problematic one is showing signs of life again.
Remember, this is not a forecast, but only a fundamentals-based nowcast. But plainly speaking, at present, consumers are in good shape and are not going to start a recession.
(Aug 27): Oil advanced after Libya’s eastern government said it will halt exports, building on tensions in the Middle East after Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon raised concerns of a broader conflict.
West Texas Intermediate rose 3.5% to settle above US$77 a barrel. Officials in Libya’s eastern government called to halt all oil production and exports as a political tussle over control of the country’s central bank deepened. The eastern government called a “force majeure” that applies to all fields, terminals and oil facilities, authorities said Monday in a statement on Facebook.
“These are ‘real’ barrels that could be lost, so that would tighten the physical market for as long as it lasts,” said Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst at UBS Group AG. How long such a disruption could last “is the difficult part to assess.”
The move is the latest in a political struggle over control of the central bank and oil revenues. Libya had already been facing patchy production this month after outages in some of its major fields. Much of the country’s exports are shipped via ports in the east, largely supplying markets in Europe. Libya produced about 1.15 million barrels a day last month.
A drop in exports may temporarily push Brent crude to the mid-US$80s a barrel, Citigroup Inc. analysts including Francesco Martoccia said in a note earlier on Monday.
Oil had already been trading higher Monday after Israel sent more than 100 warplanes to take out thousands of Hezbollah missile launchers on Sunday, sparking a response from the militant group. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and designated a terrorist organization by the US, said it will continue hostilities with Israel until the country agrees to a cease-fire in Gaza.
Oil in the US is now about 8% higher since the start of the year, supported by geopolitical risks and a likely US interest-rate cut next month. Still, fundamentals have been relatively unperturbed by the flare-up in the Middle East, which provides about a third of the world’s crude. Volatility has remained below a peak at the start of the month, and options skews are still showing a bias toward puts — which profit from lower prices.
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