April pending home sales rose 1.4%, better than the 0.9% expected but down from 1.7% last month. More importantly, Y-o-Y sales rose 3.2%, which at first glance looks passable until one recalls that last April was when “Liberation Day” tariffs…
The key economic problem, and the primary reason the bottom third or half of the population is struggling, is because of the near complete stagnation in real after-tax personal income. Corporate earnings are excellent, due in part to stellar productivity…
Kevin Warsh is the 17th Fed Chairperson. Since the start of the 5th Chairperson, Eugene Meyer on 9/16/30, the average return of the S&P 500 during the first three months of the new Chair’s term has been -12%. The worst…
April industrial production was surprisingly strong, rising 0.7% M-o-M with a 20bps upward revision to March. Manufacturing jumped 0.6% M-o-M and March was also revised up 20bps; nice. But the strength is highly selective and fits with the macro themes…
The Friday File: The state with the smallest difference between the highest and lowest elevation is Florida at 345ft. Delaware follows at 448ft, then Louisiana at 543ft, Mississippi at 806ft, RI at 812ft, and Indiana at 937ft. Alaska has the…
AI-driven demand is reshaping not only data-center investment but also financial innovation. CME Group is exploring a futures market for AI compute capacity. AI infrastructure is now sufficiently large, volatile, and capital intensive to require hedging tools. Tradable compute futures…
April existing home sales came in at 4.02 million, up 0.2% M-o-M and flat Y-o-Y, putting an exclamation point to a failed spring selling season. Moreover, inventory is up 5.8% Y-o-Y which pushed months of inventory to 4.4 from 4.2…
SCOTUS invalidated all country-specific tariffs. Last week another court invalidated the tariffs introduced to replace the initial tariffs. This means replacement tariff monies will also have to be returned to the importers/wholesalers/retailers, which will boost their profits as they ALREADY…
April net job growth was a strong 115,000, February/March were revised down just 16,000, and the workweek rose to 34.3, awesome. While the unemployment rate held at 4.3%, it was courtesy of the declining labor force participation rate, now 61.8%.…
The Friday File: The number of identified and named species totals 2.17 million. 1 million are insects, 369,000 are flowering plants, 157,648 are mushrooms, 97,085 are arachnids, 37,288 are fishes, and 21,925 are mosses. 12,502 are Reptiles, 11,185 are birds,…