Morning Report: Friday’s jobs report in perspective

Vital Statistics:

Stocks are flattish on no real news. Bonds and MBS are flat.

The upcoming week has a lot of economic data, however most of it is not housing related, and probably won’t be market-moving either. The biggest housing-related number will be new home sales and construction spending. We will also get inflation data and industrial production.

Friday’s payroll number was a definite downward surprise, and the question is whether this indicates a slowing labor market? Extremely low job prints happen occasionally we had sub-20k months in Sep 2017 and May 2016. Both prints ended up being a blip, and there is a good chance this gets revised upward in next month’s number. The number to take away from the jobs report is the increase in average hourly earnings. Average hourly earnings are a notoriously non-volatile series, and this one keeps inexorably increasing by larger and larger amounts.

Just because the US economy is doing relatively well, that doesn’t mean things are rosy overseas. China has had some bad days in the stock market, and the cracks are starting to appear in the economy. In Europe, the German Bund yield (The European benchmark) is about to go negative. Growth estimates have been slashed from 1.7% to 1.1%. So there is a bit of a global slowdown, and it means that we will probably take some shrapnel in the form of lower rates.

CFPB Chair Kathy Kraninger appeared before the House Financial Services Committee last week, and the commentary broke down along partisan lines. Democrats, pining for the Cordray days, had a laundry list of complaints, ranging from a de-emphasis on payday lenders to kvetching about changes in internal reporting lines. Republicans generally supported her and the agency’s end of regulation by enforcement. Kraninger reaffirmed the Agency’s commitment to chasing bad financial actors.

Author: Brent Nyitray

In the physical sciences, knowledge is cumulative. In the financial markets, it is cyclical View all posts by Brent Nyitray