Claims Data Showing Some Cracks In the Jobs Market

Don’t be fooled by the fact that initial jobless claims stayed at 218k in the November 25th week

Highlights

• Cracks continue to show in the U.S. labor market as businesses slow hiring

• Chairman Powell speaks later today, with all eyes on his comments on financial conditions

• Don’t cheer higher Q3 earnings growth — forward-looking momentum is slipping

• New NY Fed research shows 2023 was better than the macro fundamentals implied

While We Were Sleeping

We saw some positive action in U.S. equity futures and the Euro Stoxx 50 overnight, with a broadly based +0.7% advance. Asia-Pacific (which came off a huge November) posted a soft performance today: Hong Kong (-1.3%) and Korea (-1.2%) were down, while China’s Shanghai Composite, Taiwan, and Thailand were all flat. Not even the news of Chinese state agencies’ buying of ETF funds could help the region do anything but edge lower today (one reason for the lackluster market response was contained in the article on page A18 of the WSJ: China’s Economy Faces a Sour End to ‘23; as well as page B10: China’s Economy Is Stuck in a Vicious Cycle). The DXY dollar index has inched back down -15 pips to 103.3 and the bond market, generally speaking, has reclaimed its bid — 10-year yields slipped by around -4 basis points in Europe and by -2 basis points in the U.S. to 4.31%. The same cannot be said for New Zealand (+10 basis points to 4.97%), Australia (+8 basis points to 4.49%) or Japan (+2.5 basis points to 0.685%).

As for the Treasury market, bonds cannot be denied after yesterday’s data showed that the core PCE deflator has slowed markedly to a +3.5% annual rate (this has become a pattern, not a one-off), from the +4.8% pace posted last April. That is a cooling-off in underlying inflation of significance. Bitcoin popped +2.4% and $40,000 is now in sight (it has now doubled for the year as hopes escalate that the U.S. will sanction the first spot Bitcoin ETF). The recent oil rally hit a wall overnight, even with OPEC+ agreeing to an additional production cut of 900,000 barrels per day (reportedly in a bid to bring WTI back to an $80-$90 per barrel range), and gold mustered a +0.4% gain back to $2,045 per ounce (all market quotes time stamped to 4:30 a.m. EST).