Weekly Webcasts
Join us every Monday for expert market commentary and analysis. Our weekly webcasts cover key market developments, economic indicators, and investment strategies.
Life In The Fast Lane
The Fed’s monetary decisions are only as good as the data they’re dependent on. But economic data can be misleading for several reasons. What looks recessionary may simply be a temporary anomaly that gets revised away or followed by strong data the next month. Today, Dr. Ed makes the case that the Fed’s September decision to cut the federal funds rate by 50 basis points was too much, too soon, as subsequent data have shown. If so, inflation could halt its moderating trend and stock market valuations could inflate unduly in a meltup scenario.
Happy Second Birthday!
As the bull market turns two, Dr. Ed fondly recollects the performance of the young raging bull. At times, the bull charged and at times stomped its hooves on the ground in reaction to the monetary policy, earnings expectations, and economic outlooks waved in front of it. Yet the bull trampled even our heady expectations this year, passing our year-end S&P 500 forecast ahead of schedule. At the risk of more hoof marks, we’re maintaining our year-end targets of 5800, 6300, and 6800 for 2024-26. They reflect a bullish earnings outlook, which reflects rising profit margins in our Roaring 2020s scenario, hinging on a tech-led productivity boom. We might increase our 30% meltup odds if the bull keeps charging ahead over the remainder of this year.
A Dozen Reasons For None-And-Done
It takes a lot to kill an economic expansion, often a credit crisis during periods of Fed tightening that escalates into a credit crunch and a recession. The latest tightening has ended, and that didn’t happen. Now the latest batch of strong economic data should finally lay to rest the diehard hard-landers’ recession warnings. It should also cast doubt on whether the Fed needed to ease at all on September 18. Ed and Eric think not and predict that the Fed won’t cut the federal funds rate further this year. Dr Ed offers 12 reasons that “none-and-done” would be the Fed’s most prudent and plausible policy path for the remainder of the year.
No Hard Feelings
The permabears have fueled much negativity about the outlooks for the US economy and stock market. Their analyses often don’t hold up to scrutiny. Today, Dr Ed puts the prospects of a recession and a bear market into perspective, historically and in light of recent BEA data releases. The data show the economy to be remarkably resilient, including the goods producing sector. … With a strong economy and no recession in sight, why did the Fed ease last week? Answer: To boost demand for labor and reduce unemployment. But easing won’t rectify a mismatch between the skills employers seek and the skills job seekers offer.
Fed’s Dream Economy Versus Ours
The Fed is starting a new easing cycle to avoid a recession that we don’t see coming, based on concern about labor market deterioration that we don’t see occurring. Today, Dr. Ed compares and contrasts the world according to the Fed with the world according to our team, explaining the thinking behind both. Notably, the Fed is risking its credibility by easing without regard for election results, as both presidential candidates’ policies would raise the federal deficit in a one-party sweep, an inflationary prospect. We are rooting for gridlock.
50 Basis Points: Baked Or Half Baked?
It’s a foregone conclusion that the Federal Open Market Committee will be launching a new monetary easing cycle by cutting the federal funds rate when it meets this week. But a weighty decision faces the committee: To cut by 50 basis points or not to cut that much? Fifty is the usual amount kicking off an easing cycle, but the economic circumstances are different this time: There’s no recession clearly barreling toward us. Dr. Ed explores the pros and cons of the decision before the committee, concluding that easing by 25 bps would be the wiser course.
Retailers, Markets & AI
The latest batch of labor market indicators has caused a temporary “growth scare,” in our opinion. Concerns that economic growth is slowing have convinced the markets that the Fed will open up the easing spigots and cut the federal funds rate by more than we expect. … Previous peaks in the yield-curve spread suggest that the bond yield is close to bottoming. … There were bright spots in the employment report too: The payroll and household surveys weren’t all that bad.
Someday, There Will Be A Recession
Today, Dr. Ed puts the notion of a recession still to come into perspective. Since 1945, the US economy has been in recession 14% of the time. Most of the nine recessions stemmed from the credit-crunching effects of monetary tightening. The most recent tightening round won’t likely trigger a recession despite the “long and variable lag” often noted before the economy reacts to tightening. That’s because this tightening round is different in many respects, one being the “Immaculate Disinflation” it has achieved (moderating inflation without a recession). For multiple reasons, we think it’s wrong to expect a hard landing still to unfold from this tightening round. … Q3 is shaping up as another immaculate quarter.
Powell’s Latest Pivot Won’t Be His Last
It was an unambiguously dovish Fed Chair Powell who described the Fed’s intentions for US monetary policy at the Jackson Hole gathering of global central bankers on Friday. In our opinion, he was too dovish for this point in the economic cycle. After all, successful execution of the Fed’s dual mandate basically has been achieved: Inflation is headed on autopilot down to the 2.0% target (thanks to solid productivity gains) and unemployment remains low. Why tamper with success? Powell’s pivot to dovishness assured the financial markets that they were right to expect more easing after the widely anticipated September rate cut. But if the labor market remains resilient or inflation reheats, Powell likely will have to pivot again.
Get Ready To Short Bonds?
Last week saw unfounded US recession fears and global financial market jitters go poof as quickly as they arrived. Dr. Ed examines what the markets were overreacting to when they beat a hasty retreat and the subsequent developments that set investors straight. … Weather was the reason for much of the weakness in July’s economic indicators, suggesting that August’s data may surprise on the upside and that Fed officials might push back against expectations of numerous rate cuts ahead. We expect just one 25bps cut in September and no more for the year, especially since a greater cut could trigger another carry-trade unwind. … As for the bond market, we see three possible scenarios and lean toward the mildly bearish one.
No Recession In Earnings Or In Disinverting Yield Curve
Corporate earnings have never been higher, suggesting that employment should continue to grow as profitable companies expand their payrolls. Today, Ed and Eric put the prospect of a recession into perspective with their “Credit Crisis Cycle.” Ed notes that S&P 500 companies’ record-high forward earnings is a bullish indicator for the stock price index. The S&P 500 forward profit margin is near its record high and expected to hit new highs in the productivity growth boom we project, our Roaring 2020s scenario. … Eric explains why this time, a disinverting yield curve is not signaling an imminent recession as it has in the past. Other relied upon recession indicators are flashing false signals as well.
Rolling Into A Recession?
A weak July employment report does not a recession make. The financial markets reacted on Friday as though it does, but we believe that report was a weather-impacted anomaly and not representative of the strength of the US labor market. Eric & Ed make that case today, explaining what was going on behind the scenes to make Friday’s stock market unusually volatile, why we expect employment data to snap back in August, and why we don’t expect a hard landing of the economy. … Furthermore, the latest productivity data are consistent with our Roaring 2020s outlook.
Gold Medals
If economic performance were an Olympic sport, America would sweep up gold medals. The US economy hit record-high real GDP, real consumer spending, and real consumption per household (a barometer for standards of living) last quarter. It has achieved the feat of “immaculate disinflation”—falling inflation without recessionary fallout—as PCED inflation is fast approaching the Fed’s 2.0% target. Real capital spending by businesses also stood at a record high during Q2. The US housing market is the notable exception to the US economy’s remarkable performance, with weak housing starts and residential investment.
Dueling Views
Characterizing the investing backdrop at this juncture are big unknowns about the near-term future, such as which administration will be controlling fiscal policy six months from now and what monetary policy will be at that time. So it’s no wonder that multiple consensus viewpoints seem to be moving financial markets this way and that. Today, Dr. Ed examines what’s been driving the commodities, fixed income, currencies, and equities markets and discusses his takeaways for the economic and financial market outlooks.
Immaculate Disinflation!
In congressional testimony last week, Fed Chair Powell sounded more dovish than he has this tightening cycle. That clinched financial markets’ growing expectation that the Fed would cut the federal funds rate as early as September. We believe so too. Now that inflation is closing in on the Fed’s 2.0% target, Fed officials are increasingly focused on keeping the unemployment rate low. … From today’s vantage point, it’s clear that “immaculate disinflation”—the lowering of inflation without a recession—is possible, as we had predicted back in September 2022.
It’s Still A Bull Market Until Further Notice
Signs that the Fed might lower the federal funds rate soon have sent stocks soaring, even though those signs were weak economic data. So the Fed Put is back. We’re concerned that the Fed might ease too soon, switching its mandate focus from inflation to unemployment. That could be a wrong move given the likelihoods that the soft patch won’t grow into a recession and that trade policies next year are bound to be inflationary. … Our S&P 500 targets might be too conservative if the slow melt-up continues. Then again, the dearth of bears in the market is a contrarian bearish sign. … As for the labor market, we don’t see weakness in the data but normalization.
Inflation Heading Toward Soft Landing
Personal consumption expenditures data for May suggest clear skies on both the inflation and income fronts: The PCED has been gliding steadily earthward and looks on course to reach the Fed’s 2.0% y/y destination for it by year-end. Consumer spending has been showing no sign of retrenchment, and consumption trends jibe with our rosy economic outlook. Moderating inflation with a robust economy argue against the Fed’s easing this year. So do stimulative fiscal policy, low unemployment, and the ramifications of cutting rates on inflation and financial markets. We’re in the small camp that would prefer not to see the federal funds rate lowered this year.
Bull Tramples Even Wall Street’s Bulls
The bull market has stampeded through some of the most optimistic price targets on Wall Street including ours. While we are sticking with our S&P 500 yearend target of 5400, we’re looking forward to the bull run lifting the index to 6000 by yearend 2025 and 6500 by yearend 2026. … Q1 earnings beat expectations causing industry analysts to revise upward their consensus estimates for this year and next. We lay out our forecast for continued revenues and earnings growth during the Roaring 2020s. … The stock market may be in a meltup, so we revisit the 1990s for some guidance. The S&P 500 Information Technology and Communication Services sectors are as large now as they were during the dot-com bubble, but today they generate a larger percentage of the S&P 500’s earnings.
The Phillips Curve Ball
The rates of unemployment and inflation aren’t always inversely correlated, as the Phillips Curve model posits. Historically, they have often been; in recent times, not so much. The problem with the model is that it doesn’t account for the effects of productivity growth on price inflation. … The high rates of goods inflation experienced after the pandemic proved to be transitory, as we had anticipated. Services inflation has been more persistent but is moderating too. Pulling both down are assorted disinflationary forces. … Consumer sentiment fell in early June. We’re not sure why exactly but suggest some possibilities related to inflation, the labor market, and the uninspiring presidential race options.
To Tell The Truth
How the labor market is doing is critical to the Fed’s setting of monetary policy given its dual mandate to steer the economy away from both too-high unemployment and too-high inflation. But gauging how the labor market is doing can be a stumper: Two different employment indicators point in different directions. … Less ambivalent are the indicators of wage inflation: All point to continued moderation. … We believe the labor market has been normalizing to its pre-pandemic state and remains robust. But what the Fed makes of the labor data and may do in response is another stumper. We’d like to see it keep monetary policy as is for now.
Earnings Tales
Our economic and S&P 500 forecasts are underpinned by our forecasts for corporate revenues, earnings, and profit margins. We often compare them to industry analysts’ consensus estimates for S&P 500 companies in aggregate and how they change over time in response to earnings reports. Today, we illustrate this process by showing how data from Q1’s earnings season have fed into our own annual and forward EPS estimates, which multiplied by target forward P/Es produces our S&P 500 targets for year-end 2024, 2025, and 2026 of 5400, 6000, and 6500. Notably, Q1’s reported revenues and earnings edged down from their recent record highs, but analysts’ estimates for the future rose, showing that the quarter’s results were much better than expected.
Will There Be Peace In Our Time?
Geopolitical events can shake up the stock market, sometimes providing buying opportunities. The current geopolitical landscape is unsettled and unsettling, with potentially seismic ramifications on several fronts and lots of uncertainties: Is Putin’s call for negotiations with Ukraine a nonstarter? Is it even real? Are US efforts at brokering peace in the Middle East progressing toward that end or is that notion wishful thinking? Does the heightened pitch of China’s barking at Taiwan indicate a bite is imminent? Will G7 nations’ efforts to insulate their supply chains and economies from the harmful effects of China’s trade policies work? Is the US’s open-border policy a terrorist attack waiting to happen?
Dow 40,000 & Counting
Boomer-led households’ collective net worth has skyrocketed 19-fold since 1990. As the generation has lived long and prospered, so has the stock market (rising 40-fold over their adulthood) and the US economy (with nominal GDP up eightfold since 1982). … Looking ahead, our Roaring 2020s scenario assumes faster-than-average growth for S&P 500 earnings, GDP, and productivity. Faster productivity growth should depress unit labor costs and inflation in a process that began last year. More of the same, as we forecast, should boost profit margins to new record highs.
Are Consumers Cracking?
Today, we look at cracks in the story that consumers are cracking. Crack proponents expect consumers to start saving more and spending less because they’ve depleted their excess saving from the pandemic years. We expect personal saving rates to stay low and consumer spending to stay high as Baby Boomers, done with paying college tuitions and mortgage loans, spend their sizable nest eggs. (Many apparently are buying big-ticket items such as light trucks, for cash!) As long as consumers’ purchasing power keeps rising along with employment and real wages, our money is on the consumer. … While consumers remain in good financial shape, inflation has depressed consumer sentiment, particularly at the gas pump.