Greetings, United States: Existing home sales declined last month due to the deep freeze in parts of the country as well as collapsing housing inventories. The housing market weakness in February is expected to be temporary. Here is a comment from Moody’s Analytics. It took severe winter storms across many parts of the …
The Daily Shot Brief – March 22nd, 2021
Greetings, United States: Mortgage rates are grinding higher, … … boosted by rising MBS yields. Eurozone: Here is the composition of the ECB’s balance sheet growth, … … which is pushing excess reserves to new records. Asia-Pacific: Japanese bank shares have outperformed sharply in recent weeks. Energy: Higher oil prices would …
The Daily Shot Brief – March 19th, 2021
Greetings, Rates: Stimulus checks are on their way. As the US Treasury withdraws cash from its account at the Fed, it moves liquidity into the private sector. As a result, short-term rates have drifted into negative territory. Overnight GC repo rate (5-day moving average): Treasury bill yields (the 3-month bill is now negative): …
The Daily Shot Brief – March 18th, 2021
Greetings, United States: The Fed held the line on its dovish stance, showing no signs of potential policy adjustments in the near-term. A few more FOMC members boosted their rate projections for 2022 and 2023, … … but the bulk of the Committee expects rates to stay near zero. Here is the dot plot. …
The Daily Shot Brief – March 17th, 2021
Greetings, United States: After the economic releases, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model sharply downgraded the Q1 growth projections. Europe: Here is the US-Germany 10yr bond spread. The widening spread is driven in part by the divergence in economic growth expectations – primarily due to the gap in fiscal stimulus between the US …
The Daily Shot Brief – March 16th, 2021
Greetings, United Kingdom: The market is now pricing in a rate hike within a couple of years. Port activity has rebounded. Eurozone: EUR 10-year rates have followed the initial USD move until the ECB kicked off verbal “intervention” last month. Since then, the 10-year real rates have declined. China: Here is …
The Daily Shot Brief – March 15th, 2021
Greetings, United States: Consumer sentiment bounced this month amid soaring stock market, vaccine progress, and falling COVID cases. The improvement topped economists’ forecasts. But consumers seem to be concerned about their financial situation in a year (presumably when government support ends). Eurozone: How much will the ECB accelerate its securities purchases? Cryptocurrency: …
The Daily Shot Brief – March 12th, 2021
Greetings, Rates: The ECB has had enough of rising bond yields as it announced a faster pace of QE. The Governing Council: – First, the Governing Council will continue to conduct net asset purchases under the pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP) with a total envelope of €1,850 billion until at least the end of …
The Daily Shot Brief – March 11th, 2021
Greetings, United States: Government stimulus is expected to generate the fastest annual growth in nearly four decades. Emerging Markets: EM currencies bounced on improved risk appetite. Cryptocurrency: This chart shows corporate treasury Bitcoin balances and average buy-in prices. The corporate Bitcoin buying trend has spread from the US to Hong Kong and Scandinavia. …
The Daily Shot Brief – March 10th, 2021
Greetings, United States: Businesses are increasingly facing labor shortages. Unemployment benefits have been much higher than normal. Combined with the one-off government payments, it’s been less attractive for many workers to get back into the labor force. Childcare challenges exacerbate the situation. The index of “job openings hard to fill” hit a record high. …
