* Investors see rising odds of rate cut within four months
* Black Friday spending rises to record $9.8 billion, up 7.5% vs. last year
* Is the surge in money-market fund balances a bullish signal for markets?
* Another study reaffirms that buy-and-hold investing is tough to beat
* Are economists flying blind due to sliding response rates to official surveys?
* US economic activity remains weak in November via PMI survey data:
It’s only Tuesday on the calendar, but the holiday week has already started at The Capital Spectator’s world headquarters. But we shall return. Come Monday, Nov. 27, the lights will once again burn bright. Meanwhile… Happy Thanksgiving!
Animal spirits are reviving after US shares rallied for a third straight week, fueled by renewed speculation that the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes are done and cuts are near.
* Microsoft hires Sam Altman, ousted CEO of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT
* Radical libertarian populist Javier Milei elected president of Argentina
* Positive earnings surprises have fueled stock market rally, says strategist
* Strong labor market is why US avoids recession after rate hikes
* Foreign demand for US Treasuries slides as supply rises
* US housing starts rise for second month in October
* OPEC+ considers further oil production cuts as price sags:
● Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative
Jennifer Burns
Review via The New Republic
Jennifer Burns’s biography of the economist Milton Friedman arrives at a moment when his legacy is increasingly questioned. For no one is more closely linked with neoliberalism than Friedman, who preached the virtues of markets in popular books, on public television, and from his position at the University of Chicago. One of Friedman’s major accomplishments, as Burns describes it, is to have crafted the “basic intellectual consensus about free markets and limited government that powered twentieth-century American conservatism.” For his admirers, Friedman was a farsighted prophet of market economics, a first-rate academic who saw that the world needed more capitalism, not less, to deliver global prosperity. For others, he represents the market fundamentalism that has allowed the wealthy to capture too great a share of the gains of global growth in the neoliberal era, and led to the financial crisis of 2008.
Causes of Deviations from a Real Earnings Yield Model of the Equity Premium
Austin Murphy and Zeina N. Alsalman (Oakland University)
October 2023
A market-based forecast of inflation added to equity earnings yields explains much of the variation in stock market returns over multi-year horizons. Return deviations from the prediction are found to be negatively related to the current inflation rate (output gap) over annual (all) horizons. Existing inflation is discovered to be positively (negatively) associated with future higher interest rates (real money supply and long-term profit growth). However, long-term inflationary expectations are positively correlated with long-term real future profit growth and stock returns. These results support the hypothesis of equity returns being positively (negatively) related to inflation (countercyclical anti-inflationary policies).
* US soft landing for economy possible, says Fed Governor Lisa Cook
* Fed may cut rates as soon as March: Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel
* Avoiding China has been a winning strategy for emerging-markets investing
* Industrial production fell in October, driven lower by worker strikes
* US homebuilder sentiment in November drops to 11-month low
* US jobless claims rise to three-month high:
US economic activity in the fourth quarter remains set for a sharp slowdown vs. Q3, but the pace of expected growth has strengthened recently, based on updated nowcasts.
* Five key takeaways from Biden-Xi meeting
* US will avoid gov’t shutdown as Senate sends funding bill to Biden
* Wholesale prices in US fell 0.5% in October–biggest drop since April 2020
* NY Fed Mfg Index: regional business activity grew “modestly” in November
* Business inflation expectations steady at 2.5% in November
* US retail sales fell in October–first monthly decline since March:
Today’s “fair value” estimate of the US 10-year Treasury yield continues to suggest that the current market rate is unusually lofty and that the spread will soon narrow. Yesterday’s sharp drop in the 10-year yield (triggered by upbeat inflation news for October) suggests that the process of normalizing has started.