Vital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 2931.75 | 0.7 |
| Eurostoxx index | 390.26 | -0.72 |
| Oil (WTI) | 66.21 | 0.32 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 2.53% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 4.23% |
Stocks are lower after 3M missed earnings. Bonds and MBS are flat as well. We will get Amazon.com and Ford after the close.
Durable Goods orders came in way higher than expected for March – increasing 2.7% versus expectations of 0.8%. Much of this was transportation-related. Ex transports, they rose 0.4%, which still beat the 0.2% forecast. Nondefense capital expenditures rose 1.3%, again better than the 1.2% expectation. We might see some estimates for Q1 GDP get taken up on these numbers.
Initial Jobless Claims rose 38k to 230,000. This is the highest print in a while, but it is too early to get a read on whether the labor market is changing. FWIW, organized labor has been scoring some victories lately as worker shortages have given them the upper hand.
Homebuilder D.R. Horton disappointed the street with their earnings this morning. Homebuilding revenue increased 8% YOY and homes closed increased 10% in units. Forward guidance was the issue as its revenue forecast came in light despite the sales estimate coming more or less as expected. The stock is down about 4% pre-open.
More problems with luxury real estate: a glut of inventory in the Hamptons. There are 869 homes for sale in the tony NYC summer vacation location, which is the highest since at last 2012. This seems to mirror the glut of luxury homes in Fairfield County CT as the market seems to be finally meeting its day of reckoning, which was pushed off in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis. Most people had the wherewithall to wait out the market, hoping for a recovery that never really came. Now, they are getting impatient and it looks like this sector of the market will finally clear.
Fed pick Steven Moore is in hot water, not for his ideology (though left econ has been piling on), but for calling Cleveland OH and Cincinnati OH “armpits” of America. This is probably a non-controversial opinion to most non-Ohians, but Sherrod Brown (D-OH) thinks this should disqualify him. Note the Washington post is miffed about some humor columns that he wrote in the past too. Herman Cain has withdrawn his application, and it looks like Moore might be on the ropes as well.
Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Impressive way to start off your candidacy.
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-says-millennials-dont-have-it-tough-780348
Nothing like a refreshing dose of Baby Boomer narcissism.
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https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_Barts_Can%27t_Be_Broken
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Whether Biden agrees or not, there is evidence to support the idea that millennials, the generation born between the early 1980s and mid-’90s, have inherited a slew of problems that have put them at an economic disadvantage compared to previous generations.
Lots of things get better while other things get worse. Everything with a benefit has a cost; nothing is ever perfect. The degree to which any of these people is at a real disadvantage vs. the 60s would likely be in areas like quality of Ivy League educations and the onslaught of techno-distractions that provide cool stuff but can be emotionally unhealthy. But on the whole, society is richer and millennials are, if anything over-coddled by their parents first and then society at large later.
That being said, I don’t think Biden understands the plight of young activists. They had serious civil rights issues in the 60s, and an awesome unjust war to protest against, and the draft . . . it was a great time for activists. Millennial activists are jealous. They have to struggle to find great protests, and even though they work at it . . . it’s way harder to explain while insufficient intersectionality and diversity in their classic great literature class represents and existential crisis. Even more digestible existential crisis, like Climate Change, don’t have the urgency of kids getting drafted for villages in Vietnam getting napalmed or friends getting murdered in Mississippi for fighting racism.
It’s so tough now, millennials have to commit their own hate crimes so they have something to being victims of an protest against!
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NoVA – FYI
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6016709/
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I was not expecting this.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/26/gdp-q1-2019-first-read.html
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Trump’s policies are overheating the economy–which will lead to economic disaster! We need to elect more Democrats to put an end to this unchecked, out-of-control economic growth.
😉
Trump is so bad we’re going to have to come up with new negative metrics, like we did with Carter and the misery index. We need new terms like “over-employment” and “economic obesity epidemic” and “destructive economic mobility” so people can understand the existential peril Trump is putting us all in!
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That’s good, “economic obesity index”!
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Goldilocks report. 3.2 growth, with inflation at 1.3%. Fed is out of the way.
Exports, btw drove the growth, not consumption.
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That’s awesome! I’ve wondered why oil is going up if the economy is cooling, maybe economy is not cooling.
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So much for that “oh noes trump is pissing off our trading partners” claptrap.
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Just got this from Rashida Tlaib (cuz I’m subscribed to Bernie Sanders emails), and I find it interesting:
Typically, anything that comes from Sanders has a solicitation for money attached, which this one did not–although it might request one if you sign the petition, the typical way the Sanders organization (like HRC) operates is to make every such crisis a please for you to “chip in”. Either Rashida hasn’t gotten the message, or it’s so important to them they don’t want to spoil petition results with requests for cash.
But typically every message is “Help Bernie fight the Republicans! We need $15 from everybody to ensure justice for disadvantaged peoples everywhere!” or some such thing.
This is a bad battle to happen (for the Democrats) as we head into 2020. Hatred for Trump may be unifying but not that unifying.
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They may have a hard time pivoting back to the center after the primaries, which should prove to be bloody. The hard left is not going to just shut up this time around.
Hawt blue on blue action.
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Biden’s smart. he’s not apologizing.
somebody learned something from the past few years.
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But can he get the Democratic nomination that way?
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Donning the hair shirt buys nothing…
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maybe. assuming the crazies devour themselves. Not so much a win, but the last man standing.
there are so many candidates that name recognition alone gets him close.
but Brent is right. some sort of mea culpa doesn’t placate the progressives.
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The left is on a mission to get rid of the old white males in the party. That is what 2020 is going to be all about.
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Good read:
“Russiagate was journalist QAnon (Part 1)
The Mueller report reveals: three years of news coverage was insane conspiracy theory ”
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-was-journalist-qanon-part
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KosKidz now convinced Rod Rosenstein is a Ruskie.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/26/1853404/-Rosenstein-repeats-the-lie-that-Obama-failed-on-Russia-when-all-the-blame-lies-with-McConnell#comments
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Just saw this, from last fall. Was this ever discussed here?
Dupree and her co-author, Susan Fiske of Princeton University, began by analyzing the words used in campaign speeches delivered by Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to different audiences over the years. They scanned 74 speeches delivered by white candidates over a 25-year period. Approximately half were addressed to mostly-minority audiences—at a Hispanic small business roundtable discussion or a black church, for example. They then paired each speech delivered to a mostly-minority audience with a comparable speech delivered at a mostly-white audience—at a mostly-white church or university, for example…
…The team found that Democratic candidates used fewer competence-related words in speeches delivered to mostly minority audiences than they did in speeches delivered to mostly white audiences. The difference wasn’t statistically significant in speeches by Republican candidates, though “it was harder to find speeches from Republicans delivered to minority audiences,” Dupree notes.
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/white-liberals-present-themselves-as-less-competent-in-interactions-with-african-americans
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New research suggests that bias may also shape daily interactions between racial minorities and white people, even those whites who tend to be less biased.
It starts with a pretty big (and I think incorrect) assumption that white liberals are less biased.
“There’s less work that explores how well-intentioned whites try to get along with racial minorities,”
As compared to . . . what? Republicans who think the welfare state and a condescending, paternalistic government is bad for the groups targeted by government “help” are not well-intentioned? The only form of being well-intentioned is that you take from what identity group to give to another, presumably less-fortunate group? Wanting people to develop skills and succeed on their own merits represents bad intentions?
Dupree and Fiske suspect that the behavior stems from a liberal person’s desire to connect with other races.
I think this is wrong. It’s an outgrowth of how they see members of other races (and, more generally, most of the public): as inferiors. They do not see the vast majority of Americans, and certainly not members of other obvious identity groups, as being equal to them. It’s why the hoipoloi need better educated, smarter, morally superior people like them to lead them!
So they talk down to them just like they would young children.
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Heh.
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The workers at Stop and Shop (parent company Ahold) stores in Fairfield CT went on strike and pretty much got everything they wanted.
Balance of power between workers and employers has shifted. Wages are gonna be going up.
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Be curious how union members feel about Medicare for All?
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What cracks me up is that Trump would be just as happy if the new NAFTA doesn’t pass, since he’s already withdrawn from the other one. Nobody has any leverage here.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-nafta-faces-mounting-resistance-in-democratic-house-11556493604
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