The most interesting question going into next week is whether the US economy is picking up.
Did it start with the release of the June data? Is this going to frustrate a September rate cut? The Bloomberg Surprise Index (see chart below) bottomed on July 5, the nonfarm payroll release date. Since then, it has been trending higher. The move higher over the last five days (one business week) has been the biggest since September 2021 (bottom panel). Source: Jim Bianco, Bianco Research
What is happening in Poland is nothing short of economic wonder.
Standard of living in Poland overtaking Spain and Italy within just one generation is amazing. Source: Michel A.Arouet, IMF
This is not a Trump trade but rather a "soft landing trade" => Stocks have rallied on the prospects of a soft landing for the economy
Source: Edward Jones
Stocks have rallied on the prospects of a soft landing for the economy">
Stocks have rallied on the prospects of a soft landing for the economy">
US National debt. A bit of maths...
The current level is almost $35 trillion. And the government has baked in minimum $2 trillion deficits going forward. There are $5 trillion in government revenues per year. 100% of government revenue is consumed by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the debt. Interest on the debt is WAY over $1 trillion per year, more than 20% of government revenue. It takes another $2 trillion minimum per year to fund defense and all of the other departments of the government that they are unwilling to cut. There are also extra items like Ukraine and whatever the wars going on that get additional off budget funding. It should thus keep rising. Source: Wall Street Silver, ABC News
Interesting point of view by BofA:
"Fewer investors have focused on the inflationary effects of higher income. No other Fed hiking cycle in history occurred while government debt was so large ... interest payments flow to holders of Treasury securities and some portion will be spent." Source: BofA, Octavian Adrian Tanase
ECB leaves all rates unchanged as expected.
Main Refi at 4.25%, deposit rate at 3.75%. Guidance on interest rates also stays unchanged: Not pre-committing to particular path. ECB to follow data-dependent, meeting-by-meeting approach. Source: Bloomberg, HolgerZ
For US small caps, rates just as important as growth since 2022.
And as we know, March of 2022 is when the hiking cycle began... Source: GS, RBC
A large portion of Russell 2000 debt load is floating
It thus makes a lot of sense that small-caps were the most hot by monetary policy tightening / higher interest rates. Now the Street is anticipating rate cuts, small-caps underperformance might be coming to an end... Source: GS
