Yardeni QuickTakes (Page 59)

July's Consumer Confidence Up As Jobs Remain Plentiful

Jul 25, 2023 1 min read paid

Among the earliest monthly indicators of the US jobs market is the consumer confidence survey conducted by the Conference Board. July’s survey came out on Tuesday. The Consumer Confidence Index rose smartly this month, with solid gains in both its current conditions and expectations components (chart). Furthermore, consider the following: (1) The survey’s “jobs plentiful” series edged up to 46.9% (chart). That’s down from readings of

Ed Yardeni

Rolling Recession Rolling Over Commercial Real Estate (CRE)

Jul 24, 2023 2 min read paid

The rolling recession is rolling over the commercial real estate market (CRE), especially the market for urban office buildings. In our opinion, the challenges facing that market are serious but shouldn’t cause an economy-wide credit crunch and a recession. The Fed’s May 2023 Financial Stability Report included a review of the CRE credit market. The report observes: “The shift toward telework in many industries has dramatically reduced demand

Ed Yardeni

DEEP DIVE: Quantum Leaps

Jul 24, 2023 2 min read paid

Artificial Intelligence is just one of several technological innovations that are likely to drive the economy during the Roaring 2020s. The promise of quantum computing—and what humans can accomplish with such vast amounts of computing power—makes scientists giddy. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM are leading the race to develop these computers and offer access to them in the cloud. Here are some recent developments in the area: (1)

Ed Yardeni
Jackie Doherty

Market Call: Hot But Sunny

Jul 23, 2023 2 min read paid

The stock market may be too hot, but the outlook for the economy remains sunny. There are signs that the hottest sectors of the market may be starting to cool off a bit, while the coolest sectors are warming up. It's time for the laggards to be leaders for a while. In other words, Information Technology and Communication Services stocks might chill, while Energy, Financials, Industrials, and Materials

Ed Yardeni

The Economic Week Ahead: July 24-28

Jul 23, 2023 2 min read paid

The Fed is widely expected to hike the federal funds rate (FFR) on Wednesday by 25bps to a range of 5.25%-5.50%. Will that be restrictive enough for the Fed? Will that be the terminal rate? At his presser on Wednesday after the FOMC meeting, Fed Chair Jerome Powell is likely to say: "Maybe, maybe not." He will acknowledge that inflation is still moderating even though

Ed Yardeni

Time To Rotate The Tires & The Portfolio?

Jul 20, 2023 2 min read paid

The S&P 500 fell 0.68% and the Nasdaq 100 lost 2.28% today on disappointing earnings calls from Tesla and Netflix. They also weighed on the S&P 500 Information Technology sector, which was down 2.0%. Neither Tesla or Netflix is a technology company according to S&P. Tesla is in the S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary sector (down 3.4% today), while

Ed Yardeni

Up Or Down?

Jul 19, 2023 2 min read paid

Young bull markets tend to be widely hated. That's because many investors who sold during the preceding bear market fail to get back in at the bottom. Quite a few of them might have sold near or even at the bottom. The current young bull market is no exception. So why is the Investors Intelligence Bull/Bear Ratio (BBR) so high? It was 3.01 during the latest

Ed Yardeni

Dr Ed's Video Webcast 7/19/23

Jul 19, 2023 1 min read paid

Big banks’ top managements sounded relatively sanguine about the economy as they reported solid Q2 results, though JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon hasn’t totally abandoned the recession storyline that spooked investors a year ago. … There are two versions of the bearish economic script now, one seeing recession at the hands of savings-drained consumers and other seeing recession at the hands of the inflation-fighting Fed. We counter these narratives with

Ed Yardeni

AI Driving Market Meltup

Jul 18, 2023 2 min read paid

Today's economic indicators were weak, but the stock market rose to yet another new bull market high boosted by better-than-expected earnings from some of the big banks. Also leading the market higher was Microsoft, which rose 4.4% to a new record high. The company introduced Copilot to its suite of Office software. The $30-per-month subscription service adds AI which can design presentations, offer writing prompts, summarize meetings,

Ed Yardeni

Jamie Dimon Ambiguates About A Recession

Jul 17, 2023 2 min read

Some of the largest banks in the country— JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup—kicked off the official start to earnings season on Friday with relatively upbeat results and comments from their top managements. All three banks beat earnings expectations for Q2. BlackRock did so as well. In June 2022, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned that the economy could be in a recession by about now. Now he sounds

Ed Yardeni

Market Call: Getting Too Hot? Also: Our New S&P 500 Target.

Jul 16, 2023 2 min read paid

The S&P 500 is hot. The Nasdaq is even hotter. The mounting concern is that both might be getting too hot resulting in a stock market meltup that could set the stage for a meltdown. If so, we expect that the downdraft would be a correction rather than a new bear market since we give 25% odds to a recession scenario over the next two and a half

Ed Yardeni

The Economic Week Ahead: July 17-21