Foreign markets continued to rally in March, leading returns for the major asset classes and extending a bullish trend for foreign assets in 2025, based on a set of ETFs. US stocks, US junk bonds and US property shares, by contrast, continued to lose ground. The big loser in March: commodities, which posted an unusually steep decline.
Daily Archives: May 1, 2025
Macro Briefing: 1 May 2025
US economic activity contracted in the first quarter, according to the government’s preliminary estimate of GDP for the January-through-March period. A key factor in the 0.3% decline was a surge of imports, which subtract from growth for calculating GDP. Imports reduced the headline pace of growth by nearly 5 percentage points, the biggest negative impact on record for this category (since 1947). “Maybe some of this negativity is due to a rush to bring in imports before the tariffs go up, but there is simply no way for policy advisors to sugar-coat this. Growth has simply vanished,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.
