Morning Report: Fourth Quarter GDP revised higher

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	3862	-19.4
Oil (WTI)	59.22	-1.96
10 year government bond yield		1.59%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		3.28%

Stocks are lower this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are up small.

Fourth quarter GDP was revised upward to 4.3%, while consumption was revised downward to 2.3%. The PCE price index rose 1.5%, which is below the Fed’s 2% target rate. Ex-food and energy, the PCE index rose 1.3%, so despite all of this talk about growing inflation it isn’t really showing up in the data yet. For the full year 2020, GDP fell 3.5%, and the inflation index rose 1.2%.

Initial Jobless Claims rose 684k last week, which is a post-pandemic low. The labor market is on the mend, however these numbers are still wildly above any sort of historical norm.

Jerome Powell said that the economy is improving better than expected. He did mention the eventual tapering. “As we make substantial further progress toward our goals, we’ll gradually roll back the amount of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities we’ve bought,” Powell told NPR’s “Morning Edition” in a live interview. “We will very gradually over time and with great transparency, when the economy has all but fully recovered, we will be pulling back the support that we provided during emergency times.”