DXY languished between 105.6 and 106 on Wednesday, near the 105.3 close at the FOMC meeting on 20 September. The US Treasury 10Y yield eased to 4.55%, taking back more than half of its post-FOMC rise from 4.40% to 4.90%. US stock markets rose a fourth session, taking in stride the escalation in the Israel-Hamas war. After the knee-jerk spike on Monday, crude oil prices have eased closer to last Friday’s lows again. Markets believe this was no repeat of the Yom Kippur War that led to the oil price shock in the mid-1970s. Without an imminent risk of recession or financial shock, we see the correction in the USD and US bond yields limited by the Fed’s pivot towards keeping rates high for longer.
The FOMC minutes for the 19-20 September meeting reinforced the Fed’s unanimous resolve to keep monetary policy restrictive for as long as needed to get inflation back to the 2% target. More Fed officials reckoned another hike might be needed. Even so, the committee was also unanimous about proceeding carefully in making future decisions based on the totality of data. Investors seeking relief from the latest surge in US bond yields and the USD’s resurgence have latched on to recent Fed comments about the rise in term premiums doing some of the work in cooling the US economy.
Even so, US data has started to surprise on the upside. Consensus was wrong about last Friday’s nonfarm payrolls slowing to 170k in September. Payrolls were strong at 336k, with August revised to 227k from 187k. Please pay attention to tonight’s US initial jobless claims, which led NFP higher from its sub-200k low in June. Today’s US CPI inflation may surprise like yesterday’s PPI inflation. PPI final demand increased to 2.2% YoY in September, higher than the 1.6% consensus. Excluding food and energy prices, core PPI was higher at 2.7% vs the 2.3% consensus. August was revised to 2% from 1.6% for headline PPI and to 2.5% from 2.2% for core. Hence, consensus may be wrong about CPI inflation dropping to 3.6% from 3.7% and core CPI to 4.1% from 4.3%. If so, we can expect the PCE deflator on 27 October to do the same, one day after the US advanced GDP report. According to the Atlanta Fed GDPNow model, the US economy may expand by more than 5% QoQ saar in 3Q23 after slowing to 2.1% in 2Q23 from 2.7% in 3Q22.
Quote of the day
“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
Theodore Roosevelt
12 October in history
In 1901, US President Theodore Roosevelt officially renamed the “Executive Mansion” to the White House.
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