unemployment – The Daily Tearsheet

Morning Report: Blowout jobs report

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	3148	22.25
Oil (WTI)	57.99	-0.44
10 year government bond yield		1.85%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		3.94%

Stocks are higher after a blowout jobs report. Bonds and MBS are down.

Jobs report data dump:

Nonfarm payrolls up 266,000
Unemployment rate 3.5%
average hourly earnings up 0.2% MOM / 3.1% YOY
Employment-population ratio 61%
Labor force participation rate 63.2%

Huge surprise in payrolls given the ADP report only had 67,000. The unemployment rate of 3.5% is the lowest in 50 years. About the only blemish was the small downtick in the labor force participation rate. Note that manufacturing payrolls increased smartly.

What does this mean for the bond markets? Nothing since the Fed is on hold, probably through the 2020 election. It also might mean that the rate cuts of earlier this year are beginning to take effect and the drag from the 2018 tightening cycle is behind us.

Note that the makeup of the 2020 FOMC voting members will be more dovish than 2019. Eric Rosengren and Esther George – two hawks that dissented against rate cuts – rotate off the board next year. In their place, we will be getting Neel Kahskari and Robert Kaplan. Neel Kashkari is considered one of the most dovish members of the FOMC. Will it make much of a difference? Probably not, although the bar for increasing interest rates will be adjusted upward accordingly.

Interesting chart: the median age of US homebuyers since 1980. It has increased from 32 to 47 over that period. Half of that increase came from the Great Recession. Much of this is explained by the muted presence of the first time homebuyer, who has been about 30% of sales as opposed to their historical 40%.

Morning Report: Mortgage credit expands

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	2858	-14
Oil (WTI)	61.94	0.24
10 year government bond yield		2.45%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		4.15%

Stocks are lower after the US imposed further tariffs on Chinese goods. Bonds and MBS are flat.

As promised, the US increased tariffs on about $200 billion of Chinese goods as trade talks continue. The Chinese vowed to retaliate, and that sent the Chinese stock market up sharply overnight. Both parties say they want to strike some sort of deal and it is possible this could get walked back.

Inflation at the consumer level rose 0.3% MOM and 2.0% YOY, right in line with the Fed’s target. Ex-food and energy, they were up 0.2% / 2.1%. Although the Fed doesn’t really pay too much attention to CPI (they prefer PCE), it keeps the Fed at bay, probably through the 2020 election.

Uber priced its IPO at $45 a share last night, towards the bottom of the range. The bankers claim that was due to market conditions, but the IPO market has been lousy in general, partly because all of the value is extracted in the funding rounds prior to the IPO, which means they are coming to the market priced for perfection. The lousy performance of Lyft’s IPO didn’t help matters either. A labor standoff with its drivers isn’t helping either.

Neel Kashkari discusses why we aren’t seeing inflation even at 3.6% unemployment. His main point is that the unemployment rate uses a measure of the labor force that is probably understated. You have to be actively looking for a job to be considered part of the labor force, and people who have been unemployed for over 6 months no longer count. The tell, therefore is wage growth. Given productivity has been running at around 1.5% and inflation is running around 2%, then non-inflationary wage growth should be around 3.5%. Since we are closer to 3%, there is still slack in the labor market. He also cited two interesting stats: First, of the people that got jobs in April, 70% said they weren’t looking for work in March. That suggests that many of these workers were on disability, which is basically long-term unemployment. The fact that they are coming back is a good sign. Second, the fall in the labor force participation rate offsets the unemployment effect. To get an apples-to-apples comparison of today’s job market versus the late 90s, 2.3 million more prime age workers (age 25-54) would need to have jobs. This also explains why wage growth has been running below what it should.

Usury laws are back. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez want to cap credit card interest rates at 15%. I guess the hope is that credit card companies will say “yes, we were overcharging you and we’ll still make money at 15%, so here you go.” In reality, all they will do is stop issuing cards to people with FICOs below a certain level. Credit card debt is unsecured, which means that the lender generally gets little to nothing if the borrower defaults. So, they assign a probability of default and multiply the interest by 1 minus the default rate and decide whether that return is acceptable compared to other debt instruments. By the way, these ideas aren’t new. Much of this had been tried and rejected over the past 100 years, but i guess in politics and finance, knowledge is cyclical, versus cumulative as it is in the sciences.

Mortgage credit standards loosened last month as more lenders embraced non-QM lending. The MBA’s Mortgage Credit Availability Index increased for everything except government loans, which fell. The drop in government is probably due to VA loans, which are under scrutiny right now. By the way, although the chart below is close to highs, it doesn’t go back to the bubble years. Compared to then, credit is still much, much tighter. The current index of 190 or so is still a fraction of the 900 level which characterized the days of “pick a pay” loans.

Morning Report: Job openings exceed unemployed by over 1 million

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	2751.25	6.5
Eurostoxx index	364.16	1.38
Oil (WTI)	53.66	0.58
10 year government bond yield		2.69%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		4.43%

Stocks are higher this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are flat.

It looks like a shutdown may be avoided, as Congress has come up with a plan to allocate some funds to a smaller, cheaper border wall than Trump was looking for. The President hasn’t committed to signing anything yet, but it looks like he will go along.

The labor market continues to be on fire, as the number of job openings hit 7.3 million, a series record. The number of job openings exceeds the number of unemployed by over 1 million. Construction led the increase with a jump of 88,000, some of which is probably seasonal. The quits rate was unchanged at 2.3%, although it increased for the private sector while decreasing for government. The quits rate is a leading indicator for wage growth.

Mortgage Applications fell 3.7% last week as purchases fell 6% and refis fell .01%.

Ellie Mae is being taken private in a $3.7 billion transaction. Private Equity firm Thomas Bravo will pay $99 a share for the stock, and has allowed a 35 day “go-shop” provision, which permits Ellie Mae to seek higher bids.

Small business optimism is returning to normal levels after spiking to all time highs in 2017 and 2018 according to the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Uncertainty in Washington, exacerbated by the lengthy government shutdown is making small business worried about the future. That said, they continue to hire, though they are more cautious about expansion plans.

Morning Report: October was hard on MBS investors

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	2728	4
Eurostoxx index	364.84	0.76
Oil (WTI)	62.92	-0.35
10 year government bond yield		3.21%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		4.96%

Stocks are higher this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are down small.

The highlight of this week will be the FOMC meeting on Wednesday and Thursday. Typically they fall on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I guess they moved it for election day this year. No changes in monetary policy are expected and the Fed Funds futures market is assigning a 93% probability of no change in rates. Aside from the FOMC meeting, the only other market moving news will be PPI on Friday. Whatever happens Tuesday is probably not going to be market-moving. Best bet: Ds narrowly take the House, Rs retain the Senate, gridlock rules Washington.

October was a rough month for MBS investors, the kind folks who set our rate sheets. MBS underperformed Treasuries by 37 basis points, the worst since immediately after the election. Yes, the Fed is reducing the size of its MBS holdings, but that isn’t what makes MBS outperform and underperform. Volatility in the Treasury markets can be great for bond investors, but is is toxic for MBS investors. You can see we October was a period of high volatility in the bond market (shown below with a “VIX” for Treasuries). Volatility causes losses losses for MBS investors and makes them less likely to “bid up” securities, which translates into a phenomenon where rates don’t improve as much as you would think when rates fall, and negative reprices happen frequently. The Fed’s reduction of its balance sheet has been going on for years, and it isn’t all of a sudden going to manifest itself in rates.

Fannie and Freddie reported strong numbers and paid about $6.6 billion to Treasury between them. Fannie Mae has paid in total about $172 billion to Treasury since the bailout.

Jerome Powell thinks the current period of low inflation and low unemployment could last “indefinitely.” Historically, inflation usually increased as unemployment fell (which was measured by the Phillips Curve). He thinks that relationship has broken down over time. He notes that the last two booms were not ended by goods and services inflation, they were ended by burst asset bubbles. Since we don’t seem to have any asset bubbles brewing at the moment, this set of affairs could last a while. I wonder how much of the historical unemployment / inflation was due to union contracts which included explicit inflation cost of living increases. Regardless, he is correct that we don’t have anything resembling a stock market bubble or real estate bubble, and changes in inventory management have probably done a lot to get rid of the historical cause of recessions, which is an inventory glut.

Isn’t this a perfect encapsulation of the cognitive dissonance in the business press right now? They don’t like the guy in office, so they constantly feel like the economy is awful (Consumer confidence is definitely a partisan phenomenon). Classic example of why you always have to take consumer confidence numbers (and the business press) with a grain of salt….

Morning Report: Goldilocks moment with unemployment and inflation

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	2670	6.9
Eurostoxx index	388.46	1.44
Oil (WTI)	70.62	0.89
10 Year Government Bond Yield		2.94%
30 Year fixed rate mortgage		4.54%

Stocks are higher this morning as oil tops $70 a barrel. Bonds and MBS are flat.

Jobs report data dump:

Nonfarm payrolls 164,000 (lower than estimates)
Unemployment rate 3.9%
Average hourly earnings +.1% MOM / 2.6% YOY
Labor force participation rate 62.8%

This was the second month in a row where the labor force participation rate fell. The labor force fell by 236k, while the population increased by 175k. Wage inflation remains present, however it is still unlikely to drive higher inflation in the overall economy. The unemployment rate fell to the lowest since early 2000. This report takes some pressure off the bond market, and makes another run at 3% for the 10 year less likely.

The drop in the unemployment rate along with moderate wage growth is somewhat of a Goldilocks moment for the Fed. The Philps Curve is an older economic model which suggests that inflation should rise as unemployment falls, which makes sense: Unemployment falls -> workers become scarce -> wages rise -> those costs get passed on to consumers. In reality, the relationship between unemployment and inflation has been weak (R^2 = .27). The low r-squared gives away the weakness of the model – it is too simplistic, plus the unemployment rate might not be the best measure of employment strength since it ignores the long term unemployed. However, if you look at the plot below, you can see we are at a very “Goldilocks” point, which is denoted by the yellow star.

The upcoming week will have the consumer price index and the producer price index, but that should be the only market-moving data. We will have some Fed-speak as well today and Wednesday.

Donald Trump has until May 12 to renew the Iran deal. Israel calls the deal fatally flawed, while Iran says the US will regret not renewing it. West Texas Intermediate is trading over $70 on fears the deal will not be renewed.

Doctors tend to have difficulties getting a mortgage early in their careers – they usually have a high level of student loan debt, no savings and the earnings early on can be low. Mortgages that carry a higher interest rate but don’t require downpayments are becoming more popular for this market. These loans can carry an interest rate 25 -100 basis points over prevailing rates. although they usually don’t require PMI. One catch – the prepay speeds on these mortgage will almost certainly be high.

The CFPB dodged a bullet – PHH will not appeal the DC Circuit’s ruling that rejected their claim that the single-director structure is unconstitutional. There are other cases in the process that also use that claim, so it is possible the question may come to SCOTUS. If one of these cases makes it to SCOTUS, the only one with standing to defend the agency is the Administration, who probably won’t defend it.

Merger news: Mutual of Omaha is buying Synergy One. Synergy One will be a wholly-owned subsidiary and will continue to operate out of San Diego.