Economic Survey

Another Growth Scare

Feb 27, 2025 3 min read

The stock market is in the midst of another growth scare, in our opinion. The latest batch of economic indicators has been weak. The current growth scare is reminiscent of last summer's scare. It is just as likely to pass if the next batch of economic indicators improves, as we expect. That still leaves policy uncertainty under Trump 2.0 to spook stock investors. We still expect that

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Not Too Cold, Not Too Hot

Jan 14, 2025 3 min read paid

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Are Home Prices Just Too D@mn!#$ High?

Aug 28, 2024 2 min read paid

We were surprised to see the sharp drop in the percentage of survey respondents with plans to buy any home within the next six months in August's consumer confidence survey released on Tuesday (chart). After all, the 30-year mortgage rate declined from 7.79% at the end of October 2023 to 6.46% currently (chart). That's still relatively high, especially since the spread between this yield

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Confidence Survey Shows Jobs Are Still Relatively Plentiful

Jun 25, 2024 2 min read paid

The first available monthly indicator of the labor market is the "jobs plentiful" series in the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) survey. Today, June's reading showed that 38.1% of respondents said so (chart). That's a slight uptick from May, and a relatively high reading. The "jobs hard to get response" ticked down to 14.1%, which is a very low reading. The

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Game Over For Birth/Death Adjustment?

Jun 11, 2024 2 min read paid

Some economists claim that recent nonfarm payroll gains are misleadingly strong and are masking the underlying weakness in the labor market. These die-hard hard-landers point to a wonky calculation by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), i.e., the Birth/Death Adjustment (B/D). The B/D Adjustment attempts to account for job gains attributable to new businesses and job losses due to business closures that don't show

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Will Depressed Small Business Owners Depress The Economy?

Apr 9, 2024 2 min read paid

Stocks marked time today, while bonds rallied after the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) released its March survey of small business owners this morning. It was a pessimistic report overall. The small business optimism index fell to the lowest reading since December 2012 (chart). Yet, the solid performance of the economy has been at odds with the mounting pessimism of small business owners since early 2022. The employment-related series

Ed Yardeni

Short-Term Caution Signs

Jan 24, 2024 2 min read paid

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 rose to fresh record highs today. That's great. Not so great is that bullish sentiment remains high. The two bull/bear ratios we monitor remain elevated (chart). From a contrarian perspective, that's bearish. Today's put/call ratio was relatively low at 0.67 (chart). From a contrarian perspective that's bearish too. The price of

Ed Yardeni

The Promised Land

Jun 27, 2023 2 min read paid

The permabears will have to postpone their imminent recession yet again based on today's batch of US economic indicators, which suggests that our "rolling recession" is turning into a "rolling expansion." The housing market seems to be recovering nicely from its recession, which started early last year. The manufacturing sector is showing signs of bottoming, while nondefense capital goods orders excluding aircraft rose to

Ed Yardeni

May's Regional Business Surveys Remained Weak

May 30, 2023 1 min read paid

A federal debt ceiling deal is in the works. The stock market yawned. The bond market rallied. Interest rates fell even though the deal would allow Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to issue lots of Treasuries to replenish her department's checking account. Perhaps the bond market responded to the Dallas Fed's May regional business survey released today, which was weak. So were the other four regional business

Ed Yardeni

The Economic Week Ahead: May 30-June 2

May 29, 2023 2 min read paid

Now that a debt deal is on the verge of becoming a done deal, the markets can focus on economic growth and inflation. This week will be a big one for labor market indicators. May's consumer confidence survey (Tue) will include a series for "jobs plentiful." The latter is highly correlated with the JOLTS report's "job openings" series to be released with

Ed Yardeni

A Dish of Mixed Nuts

Mar 28, 2023 1 min read paid

Today's economic indicators show that the labor market remains tight, while manufacturing activity remains weak. That mix supports our soft-landing scenario with inflation continuing to moderate and the Fed done (or almost done) tightening. Consider the following: (1) Consumer confidence. The labor market remains strong according to the March survey of consumer confidence conducted by the Conference Board. The “jobs hard to get” response remained very low at

Ed Yardeni

Tale Of Two Surveys Of Purchasing Managers

Mar 3, 2023 2 min read paid

Today's NM-PMI for February was happier than the month's M-PMI released on Wednesday. On balance, they confirm that consumers have pivoted away from buying goods to services, and that the rolling recession in the goods-providing industries continues to be offset by strength in services-providing ones. Let's start with the happy news that's contributed to this morning's stock market rally: (1)

Ed Yardeni

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