US Economy

REPRINT: 'The Protectionist Road To Depression.' Déjà Vu All Over Again?

Mar 28, 2025 20 min read

💡This is a timely reprint of a September 9, 1985 Topical Study by Edward Yardeni titled "The Protectionist Road To Depression." The original with charts can be found here. It is very relevant to today's debate over the trade policies of the Trump administration, which is scheduled to announce reciprocal tariffs on most of America's major trading partners on April 2. Will they retaliate

Ed Yardeni

Economic Growth Seems To Be Picking Up

Feb 10, 2025 3 min read paid

Bearish stock market narratives have been pervasive since early 2022. They are becoming more so now with each headline coming out of Washington. Duties, deportations, duties, and de-bureaucratization (the four "Ds") can have a shock-and-awe effect. But financial markets broadly have been unperturbed because the US economy continues to be rock solid. Then again, reining in the budget deficit and trade deficit is no easy task. President Donald

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

A Bunch Of Cool & Colorful Charts

Jan 9, 2025 3 min read

I. US FINANCIAL MARKETS The bull/bear ratios have dropped sharply over the past couple of weeks (chart). From a contrarian perspective that's a bullish development for the US stock market. The US bond yield has been increasing while the ratio of industrial to precious metals commodity prices has been falling since 2022 (chart). This unusual divergence might suggest that bond investors are increasingly concerned about the long-term

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Home For the Holidays

Nov 27, 2024 3 min read

This is the time of the year when we all count our blessings. The Yardeni Research team thanks you for your interest in our research. We wish you a great Thanksgiving tomorrow with your family and friends at your home or theirs. Since 2010, we've been recommending a Stay Home investment strategy, i.e., overweighting the US in global equity portfolios, rather than a Go Global strategy. So

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Stock Market Rally Broadening As Economy Chugs Along

Nov 21, 2024 3 min read

Fed officials may be cutting rates because they are worrying about the ominous "long and variable lags" of their monetary policy tightening from March 2022 through August 2024. But there are still no signs that those lags exist as the economy continues to chug along. It's true that the Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) fell yet again during October, but it has been a misleading

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Trump 2.0 Supercharges Our Stay Home Investment Strategy

Nov 14, 2024 3 min read paid

We've been bullish on the dollar for a while. Since, the Fed's September 18 meeting, the US Dollar Index (DXY) is up 5.8% (chart). Roughly half of that move has occurred since last Tuesday's US elections. The strong dollar confirms our view that the Fed has already cut the federal funds rate too much too soon, and now likely won’t be lowering

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

The Front Cover Curse

Oct 22, 2024 1 min read

We've been recommending overweighting the US in global equity portfolios since 2010. We still are, and it is still working (chart). We started writing about the Roaring 2020s in the US in 2020. For example, on August 11, 2020, we wrote: "We live in interesting, though not unprecedented, times. The Roaring 1920s could be a precedent for the Roaring 2020s. As Mark Twain observed: 'History doesn’

Ed Yardeni

Lost Decade Ahead For Stocks With Only 3% Annual Returns?

Oct 22, 2024 3 min read

We've been asked to comment on yesterday's grim forecast by economists at Goldman Sachs that the S&P 500 will produce annualized returns of only 3% (before accounting for inflation) over the next 10 years. They reckon that the range of possible outcomes includes -1% at the low end and +7% nominal returns at the high end. In our opinion, even Goldman's optimistic

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

US Economy Passing Tests With Flying Colors

Oct 3, 2024 3 min read paid

While everyone in our business breathlessly awaits tomorrow's payroll employment report, the economy passed the brunt of this week's labor market tests with flying colors. Of course, the labor market is showing signs of easing. But that's mostly compared to the record tightness seen a couple years ago. We think the labor market is normalizing. Meanwhile, the economy continues to prove stronger than many

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

The US Economy Is Roaring!

Oct 2, 2024 3 min read

Last Thursday on September 26, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released several very significant upward revisions to real GDP, real GDI, personal income, and personal saving. Collectively, they blew away the hard landing scenario. They didn't leave much if any room for the soft landing scenario either. They suggest that productivity growth will be revised higher and unit labor cost inflation will be revised lower. These revisions

Ed Yardeni

Soft Patch Getting Softer. Is That Raising Odds of Fed Rate Cut in September & Stock Market Meltup?

Jul 3, 2024 3 min read paid

Last week and this week have been good ones for the recession camp of economists. Indeed, the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tracking model's estimate of real GDP growth during Q2-2024 dropped from a robust 3.0% on June 26 to half as much today. The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index is the most negative it has been since August 2022 (chart). We are still in the soft-patch camp.

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Lackluster Fed Regional Business Surveys

Apr 29, 2024 2 min read paid

We now have the regional business surveys conducted by five of the Federal Reserve district banks. The average of their general business conditions indexes closely tracks the national manufacturing purchasing managers index (M-PMI), which rose slightly above 50.0 during March following 16 consecutive monthly readings below this level (chart). The regional average index was still negative in April. So it has yet to confirm that the rolling recession in

Ed Yardeni

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