‼️THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED IN AT LEAST 35 YEARS‼️
The spread between the 2-year US government bonds and Fed's rates FELL to -1.686%, the most in over 3 decades. In other words, bond market expects the Fed to cut BIG in the next months. Question: Is the bond market too dovish? Or is the Fed too much behind the curve? Source: Global Markets Investor, Bloomberg
Ahead, of interest rates cut, how does the average asset allocation look like?
Are we going to see cash moving out of money markets into risk assets? Well, according to this chart by Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT, MBA, as a percent of total assets, money market fund holdings are now at 2-year LOWS !!!
Mapping out the current state of AI markets by :
"Most value has accrued to the semiconductor ecosystem ($130B+ in revenue this year from AI) and the data center buildout (number of US data centers is expected to double in the next four years). Energy is a legitimate bottleneck to the data center buildout, and hyperscalers/developers are aggressively acquiring real estate with power availability. The cloud companies are at a ~$20B run rate, with Microsoft generating ~$5B of that. We’re seeing increasing interest in AI applications but little large scale value creation yet. The AI app layer will ultimately determine the value of the industry as the current infrastructure buildout will become a bubble without value creation on the back end". Source: @EricFlaningam, Felicis
Estimated investments needed to meet battery demand
Source: Visual Capitalist
After surpassing the March 2000 relative strength high, the Tech sector has sharply underperformed over the last 2 months.
Is this the start of a secular change in leadership? Source: Charlie Bilello
Full-time employment DROPPED by 1 million workers in August on a year-over year basis, marking the 7th consecutive monthly decline.
Since the June 2023 peak, full-time job count in the US has fallen by a whopping 1.5 million. Meanwhile, part-time employment rose by 1 million year-over-year in August. Additionally, the number of permanent job losers jumped by 324,000 year-over-year, to 2.5 million, the highest since November 2021. This was the 16th straight month of part-time job gains, the longest streak since the 2008 Financial Crisis. The US job market is cooling down. Source: FRED, The Kobeissi Letter
Ahead of ECB meeting, we got some mixed messages about the central bank speed and extent of rates cuts - see below.
Meanwhile, the market see quarterly ECB rate cuts - see chart below. - European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council member Gediminas Simkus told Econostream Media that he saw a “clear case” for an interest rate cut in September but regarded the potential for another one in October was “quite unlikely.” - Executive Board member Piero Cipollone told France’s Le Monde newspaper that recent economic data so far had confirmed that inflation was slowing, giving scope for the ECB to lower borrowing costs. “There is a real risk that our stance could become too restrictive and harm the economy”. - However, Bundesbank’s Joachim Nagel continued to warn about premature easing, given elevated wage growth and services inflation, in an interview with the Faz newspaper. Source: Bloomberg, T Rowe
AstraZeneca Under Pressure but Entering Support Zone
AstraZeneca's long-term trend remains positive, though it is under pressure today and has dropped about 10% over the past week. The stock is now entering the major support zone between 11,540-12,050. Keep an eye on these levels. Source: Bloomberg
