The Fed held rates steady yesterday, as universally anticipated, with the 2025 median dot unchanged from June, still signaling one cut. For 2026, the median now projects zero cuts, down from one in June, with a lone cut eyed for 2027. The longer-run dot stayed put at 3.0%. The 2025 dot was marginally hawkish compared …
• Nonfarm payroll employment rose 151k overall and 140k private; private job gains are in line with trend but there were some other details in the report that were soft • The unemployment rate rose from 4.0% to 4.1% (4.14%) even while participation fell two-tenths of a percent • The workweek held at the cycle …
The minutes of the January FOMC meeting confirmed the message that Chair Powell gave at the January press conference and his subsequent Congressional testimony: that the Fed is in no hurry to cut rates further — but also retains its easing bias. The minutes revealed that participants saw the “current high degree of uncertainty” as …
January FOMC minutes reinforce a continued pause Read More »
In our 2025 Outlook we highlighted how strong consumer balance sheets have been supporting spending. While real PCE growth surged over 4% in 2H24, we look for consumer spending in 1H25 to normalize to above 2% given the still solid labor market. Rising delinquencies had led to some questions about the health of consumers, but …
In contrast with other January inflation data this week, import prices came in slightly softer than expected. The headline measure rose 0.3% last month, but unlike most other inflation data these are not released as seasonally adjusted. On a year-ago basis, import prices grew 1.9% in January, down from an upwardly-revised 2.3% in December but …
04/10/2025—Because of the federal government shutdown, the Department of Labor isn’t releasing the standard jobless claims press release, although the bulk of state-level data continues to be made available on Thursday evenings. The table provided above represents our approximation of the national seasonally adjusted totals for the most recent week, drawn from the data that …
10/04/2025—We anticipate that the producer price index (PPI) for final demand increased by 0.2% in August, representing a considerably milder pace compared to the unexpected 0.9% uptick seen in July. This projection for a more restrained monthly advance partly stems from significantly reduced impacts from food and energy relative to the previous month. In particular, …
We forecast that the consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.4% (0.36% to higher precision) in August, which would be the firmest monthly rise since December. If realized, the over-year-ago pace of headline CPI inflation would increase to a seven-month high of 2.9%. We expect both food and energy CPI prices to lend some support to …
04/19/2026–even with tighter supply and shrinking stockpiles, physical oil prices have dropped significantly—from $144 to around $116—largely because demand is cratering. This is most obvious in Europe, where refineries are actually losing money on every barrel they process, forcing them to cut back production because they can’t pass high costs on to consumers. On the …
04/19/2026–In the currency markets, we are starting to bet against the US dollar again, returning to our long-term view that its value will eventually drop. However, because inflation remains high and energy prices are still volatile, we are being picky and focusing on trades that offer better interest rate returns. In emerging markets, we’ve shifted …
