Lara Rhame
Lara Rhame
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Yet again, the U.S. consumer has phenomenal resilience and is not being swayed by the employment numbers coming out.
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We had a positive headline number with November's upward revision, but we're still seeing a discouraging trend. Excluding auto sales, sales have gone from 0.8 to 0.3 to flat over October, November and December. So we're seeing growth mainly based on auto purchases. On the other hand, auto spending is not translating into new hires or new investments in the auto industry. And that's true across industries.
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What this means is that business leaders are not convinced that strong sales numbers will be maintained on or at the same level.
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The trade number at best leaves the dollar where it was and at worst sparks a substantial dollar decline.
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A lot of people don't understand that the ISM number is not actually an output number. It's the equivalent of consumer confidence, but for businesses. So certainly outlook has improved, but it remains to be seen how clearly that will translate into actual activity.
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A turnaround in manufacturing has not been signaled anywhere else, so I guess I'm not as excited about this number as the markets seem to be. I would like to see this confirmed in another month of data.
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The weaker-than-expected housing number still leaves housing at a fairly high level of activity but will raise some eyebrows as markets worry about the (Federal Reserve) overshooting (with rate hikes).
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Every time you see a number that shows prices decelerating, immediately you have to think of sluggish re-hiring, ... It means companies will still be closely guarding the bottom line and will be slow to add to labor.
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The dollar had positive momentum going into the numbers but the numbers themselves, I don't think were enough to push the dollar higher. What we've seen... is the dollar moving on the back of the bond market. The 10-year rose to a new cyclical high again.
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I think a lot of gloom still exists about the size of the deficit and the market is punishing the dollar for that.
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I think it's too soon to call for a bottom simply because history has shown us that with this currency, it's a tough bet.
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It is a modest dollar negative; the trade data combined with the claims data, but the focus this morning is very much on digesting the BOJ and on payrolls tomorrow.
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We had a massive jump in the Conference Board measure of consumer sentiment last month, and everybody will be looking for confirmation of that improvement in the Michigan survey.
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Look at the subcomponents -- what are inventories and new orders in this case? ... If I were the purchasing manager at a hospital and somebody asked me about 'new orders,' what would I count? Syringes? Patients? At a bank, what's 'inventory?' Palm Pilots? Mortgages?