Morning Report: Economic Growth is picking up in April

Vital Statistics:

 LastChange
S&P futures4,155 3.0
Oil (WTI)78.17 0.79
10 year government bond yield 3.52%
30 year fixed rate mortgage 6.47%

Stocks are lower this morning as earnings continue to come in. Bonds and MBS are up small.

The economy is accelerating again, according to the Flash Composite PMI report from S&P Global. “The latest survey adds to signs that business activity has regained growth momentum after contracting over the seven months to January. The latest reading is indicative of GDP growing at an annualized rate of just over 2%. Growth is also reassuringly broad-based, led by services thanks to a post-pandemic shift in spending away from goods, though goods producers are also reporting signs of demand picking up again. Jobs growth has accelerated alongside the resurgence of demand, aided by reports of vacancies being more easily filled, reflecting improved supply of candidates and higher wages. However, the upturn in demand has also been accompanied by a rekindling of price pressures. Average prices charged for goods and services rose in April at the sharpest rate since September of last year, the rate of inflation having now accelerated for three successive months. This increase helps explain why core inflation has proven stubbornly elevated at 5.6% and points to a possible upturn – or at least some stickiness – in consumer price inflation.”

The national delinquency rate fell below 3% for the first time, according to the latest info from Black Knight. There is generally a seasonal aspect to this as DQs fall in March due to tax refunds. Foreclosure starts and rates increased however we are still well below pre-pandemic levels. I suspect that mortgage forbearance is still playing a part in distorting the numbers.

The Fed is re-thinking its decision to loosen the stress test requirements for banks with under $250 billion in assets. Under the relaxed rules, only the bigger banks were required to add unrealized gains / losses to their portfolio of available for sale securities. The Feds think this might have allowed Silicon Valley Bank to hide its problems. That said, Silicon Valley Bank wasn’t hedging the interest rate risk on its portfolio and that was the issue. The rule change might have tipped off regulators and the markets that something was wrong a bit earlier but the bank would still have failed.

Despite the decrease in median home prices in NAR’s Existing Home Sales report, asking prices are still up about 2.5% on a year-over-year basis. That said, any positive pricing momentum in the real estate market seems to be fading as affordability constraints remain an issue.

Active inventory continues to rise, with the number of homes for sale increasing 49% on a year-over-year basis.

18 Responses

    • It shows, it seems to me, just how much everyone is projecting, and how (almost) everyone is getting it wrong … And she’s managed to bait both the woke left and the anti-woke right into making her very famous and a lot richer than a year ago.

      Andrew seems to consider himself part of elite cadre who was able to cleverly suss out that Dylan’s schtick was basically an acceptably misogynistic grift, but I don’t know too many people who haven’t considered him more opportunistic than sincere. It’s clickbait. Not rocket science.

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      • The idea that the anti-woke right somehow made her famous is ludicrous. The anti-woke right didn’t know who she was until the left made her someone.

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        • Anti-woke right had elevated his status since they started covering him, especially with the Bud Light thing but really starting we he got selected to interview the president. But I hadn’t heard of him until then.

          His shtick is like doing womanface, and no different in his cliches that a white man in blackface talking about how he loves watermelon and fried chicken. It’s just overtly sexist shtick and he’s beloved because he’s a girl now and he cries all the time and is ditzy and spends money he doesn’t have on shoes, just like a woman!

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        • Brent:

          The idea that the anti-woke right somehow made her famous is ludicrous.

          You mean “him”?

          People like Sullivan always need to invent some sort of equivalence on the right when critiquing the left. It is how they manage the cognitive dissonance that arises from supporting politicians that promote things they know are wrong.

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    • jnc:

      This is pretty good:

      He completely undermines his own thesis by calling Mulvaney “she”.

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  1. Not good for Biden if the Democratic House Organ is picking this up.

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  2. I am so shocked!

    https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a43657072/evs-fall-short-epa-estimates-sae-article/

    Next you’ll tell me that auto companies, I’d don’t know, say Volkswagen, will scam emission standards with manipulative software.

    To that I say, Bullshit! They would never intentionally deceive the government and their customers!

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  3. Do they really believe the apocalyptic AGW claims that are out there?

    It’s hard for me to believe it’s not just busybodies who want to dictate how people live, think and eat.

    Why can’t people just, you know, step away from rising water, if it’s even rising? It’s not like it rises 40 feet over night.

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    • Lots of people believe it casually—it’s religion and they don’t want to be blasphemous. That said either way it’s a lot of posing; they want to be seen having the intelligent opinion on the issue and to not be regressive.

      That said—everything has a cost. That’s what their solutions always omit. Soy ain’t that great for people. Some people are allergic to soy. Replace all meat with soy and you commit millions of acres to soybeans.

      And so on. Going vegan is not a magic bullet. At all.

      Then we could get into the environmental damage cause by electric cars …

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    • The climate doomsday crowd is a cult. And yes, they are meddlesome busybodies who want to dictate how you live and eat.

      Making up rules is like sex for these people.

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      • So, would these people just bootstrap another issue into a crisis so they could dictate how we live?

        Can I suggest obesity then?

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        • They are authoritarian utopians. They think they (and only they) are the ultimate arbiters of what should be permitted and what should be forbidden.

          They don’t have some sort of strong authoritarian leader, though. They are more like a Nurse Ratched-led bureaucracy.

          The modern left has a completely female worldview.

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        • I know a few females and only one likes to tell people how to live and wants the government to effect that. There are men that want that as well. Now, this is the circle I’m in. I just don’t see how that authoritarian impulse though, is exclusively female driven. I don’t see the democrats as singularly or dominantly female in its worldview.

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        • McWing:

          I don’t see the democrats as singularly or dominantly female in its worldview.

          I see them as being driven largely by emotion, which is a feminine characteristic.

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        • Feminism is the North Star for the democrat party.

          And the wokeness shit is straight out of the female hive-mind.

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        • Unless you’re a trans-exclusionary feminist, then you’re a Nazi.

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        • Whew! Then I dodged a bullet!

          Like

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