US Outlook Report: 2016 Comes in Like a Lion It’s the New Year’s hangover that never ends. Granted we are only about a week into the New Year, but so far it’s been a doozy. China’s Shanghai stock market plunged 7.0 percent twice this week after tripping new circuit breakers designed to staunch market panic, […]
Continue ReadingUS Outlook Report: FOMC Signals a Return to Normalcy Citing considerable improvement in labor market conditions – specifically job gains, declining unemployment, and diminished underutilization of labor resources – the FOMC went ahead with its first interest rate hike in more than nine years. The move raises the Fed funds target rate to 25 to […]
Continue ReadingUS Outlook Report: A Few Modest Misses Won’t Deter a Fed Hike The last full week of U.S. economic releases, before what arguably is the biggest FOMC meeting in nine years, came in on the underwhelming side. Labor market indicators from the Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI) for November, Job openings for October, and […]
Continue ReadingUS Outlook Report: What to Expect in 2016 2016 is right around-the-corner. I haven’t even finished all my holiday shopping yet, and I am still working on Thanksgiving leftovers, but the New Year will be here before you know it. In this week’s US Outlook Report, we give you a little preview of what you […]
Continue ReadingUS Outlook Report: Will Small Business Confidence Ever Recover? The pessimism among small business owners throughout this expansion is unprecedented. According to data from the National Association of Independent Businesses, this is the slowest recovery in small business confidence ever coming out of recession, going all the way back to the mid-1970’s. Small business optimism […]
Continue ReadingUS Outlook Report: It’s All About The Jobs There were more hits than misses this week with the U.S. economic indicators. The October jobs report revealed a solid improvement in job creation from the prior two months, solidifying expectations for better economic growth in the fourth quarter. This will likely trigger an initial interest rate […]
Continue ReadingUS Outlook Report: Ignore the Headline Q3 GDP Report Was Solid Third quarter U.S. real GDP growth came in a touch lighter than our forecast at 1.5%, and was a big deterioration from the second quarter’s 3.9% real GDP growth, but in this instance the headline is deceiving. Our view is that third quarter […]
Continue ReadingUS Outlook Report: Economy is Looking Better in October Following August and September’s abrupt slowdown, the economic data points so far for October suggest the U.S. economy is picking up some momentum in the fourth quarter. This should help to raise expectations of a better Q4 GDP report and could make a December rate hike […]
Continue ReadingUS Outlook Report: Core Inflation Holds Firm in the Third Quarter In your heart you know there is still inflation out there, no matter what the government or Federal Reserve says. Indeed, the September consumer price index release this week held some interesting information about the future path of inflation. While the headline CPI continued […]
Continue ReadingUS Outlook Report: Replacing Liftoff with Gradual Levitation The word “liftoff” brings visions of a rocket on the launch pad ready to vault into outer space. But recent downward revisions to our growth outlook for 2016, suggest a far calmer interest rate normalization approach, more like a day old helium balloon that is able to […]
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