In early November, markets were moderately confident that a slowing labor market would persuade the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates for a third time at the Dec. 10 policy meeting. But confidence on that bet is unravelling amid concerns that inflation may not be as benign as recently expected.
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Macro Briefing: 17 November 2025
The US Labor Department said it will release the delayed payrolls report for September this week, on Thursday (Nov. 20). “The absence of timely official numbers left the markets and the Fed operating in a data fog, forced to scour alternate sources to gauge the underlying outlook,” Bank of America economist Shruti Mishra said in a note. “With the shutdown resolved, all eyes will now be on the incoming data dump.” The Economsit reports: “ADP’s numbers point to a decline in September, followed by a rebound in October. Those of Revelio Labs, a competitor, point to a rise in September and a decline in October.”
Book Bits: 15 November 2025
● The History of Money: A Story of Humanity
David McWilliams
Review via New York Post
Looking at various moments in history, McWilliams reveals an unsettling through-line: humans keep making the same mistakes with money because money’s fundamental nature hasn’t changed. It’s still about trust, still about pricing time and risk, still capable of building empires or destroying them. Lenin and Hitler understood what Tiberius knew two millennia earlier.
“Money can be more powerful than religion, ideology, or armies,” McWilliams writes. “Mess with money and you mess with far more than the price system, inflation, and economics — you mess with people’s heads.”
Research Review | 14 November 2025 | Bubble Risk
Bubble Beliefs
Christian Stolborg (Copenhagen Bus. School) and Robin Greenwood (Harvard)
October 2025
We study expert beliefs during boom-bust episodes in which highly valued individual US stocks experience a price run-up followed by a crash. As prices surge, analysts forecast exceptional earnings growth and high near-term returns. Short interest stays low. Media coverage rarely mentions the word “bubble”, even as crashes unfold. Optimism portends crashes: the most bullish forecasts predict the highest crash risk. The results are consistent with accounts of bubbles driven by overly optimistic expectations about fundamentals and future prices, with only limited presence of skeptics who recognize the bubble, apart from a few cases where the share lending market offers signals.
Macro Briefing: 14 November 2025
US retail spending rose for a fifth straight month in October, according to data published by the Chicago Federal Reserve. The estimate tracks retail and food services sales excluding motor vehicles & parts and indicates a 0.4% rise last month, up slightly from a 0.3% gain in September, according to the regional Fed bank. The last two monthly advances also mark softer gains vs. the official retail sales data from the Census Bureau, which published numbers through August before the government shutdown paused updates.
Weak Jobs Data Favors Another Rate Cut In December… Maybe
The government shutdown has ended and new government data will soon start to roll out ahead of the next Federal Reserve policy announcement on Dec. 10. The modest uptick in inflation lately will keep markets guessing, but several estimates of payrolls from private sources in recent days suggest that the case for more easing still has the edge.
Macro Briefing: 13 November 2025
President Trump signed legislation into law that ends longest government shutdown in history. The bill was narrowly passed by the House of Representatives earlier on Wednesday. All but six Democrats voted against the bill while just two Republicans in the House voted against the bill. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the negative impact on the economy will be mostly recovered once the shutdown ends, but not entirely. It estimated the permanent economic loss at about $11 billion for a six-week shutdown.
High-Beta Stocks Continue Leading Equity Risk Factors In 2025
There’s no contest going into the final stretch of the year among US equity factor ETFs. So-called high beta stocks – shares with relatively high levels of return volatility – are leading the field by a wide margin, based on a set of ETFs through Tuesday’s close (Nov. 11).
Macro Briefing: 12 November 2025
Global oil and gas demand could rise through 2050, according to a new forecast by the International Energy Agency. The revised outlook contrasts with IEA’s previous estimate of a speedy transition to cleaner fuels. The report notes: “Total global energy demand continues to increase, rising by 2% in 2024 to more than 650 exajoules (EJ). Fossil fuels accounted for nearly four-fifths of total energy demand – a share that has decreased only marginally since 2000.”
The Bond Market’s Having A Very Good Year
The Wall Street maxim that markets climb a wall of worry seems to apply to the bond market this year. Despite a range of concerns, including tariff-related inflation to government debt, fixed-income securities are posting strong year-to-date gains through Monday’s close (Oct. 10), based on a set of ETFs.