Wall Street Journal (December 23)
“New data released Tuesday showed that the unemployment rate has risen from 4% when President Trump took office to 4.6% in November. A sizable drift like that isn’t a good political omen, but it also isn’t rare.”
Fortune (August 27)
“Investors are underestimating the inflation risk of President Trump’s tariffs, which will push up import costs,” concludes analyst Henry Allen of Deutsche Bank. “One indicator forecasts that U.S. inflation may soon exceed 4%. Consumers are also expecting higher prices. But the inflation swaps market has yet to reflect these risks.”
Tags: 4%, Allen, Analyst, Consumers, Deutsche Bank, Forecasts, Higher prices, Import costs, Indicator, Inflation, Investors, Risk, Trump’s tariffs, U.S., Underestimating
New York Times (July 9)
“The environment for building renewable energy projects has become much tougher since the coronavirus pandemic. According to industry estimates, the costs of developing an offshore wind farm — large ones run to billions of dollars — have risen 40 percent in recent years because of higher material and labor costs and interest rates.”
Tags: 0%, 4%, Building, Coronavirus pandemic, Costs, Developing, Environment, Interest rates, Labor, Material, Offshore, Renewable energy, Tougher, Wind farm
Market Watch (July 1)
“So far, high valuations haven’t dimmed investors’ enthusiasm for stocks,” but there are concerns. The forward price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P500 “currently stands at 21.1, above the 90th percentile from the past 40 years. The S&P 500 is even more richly valued on a trailing 12-month basis. In the past, when valuations have been this stretched, the median one-year forward return for the index has been -4%.”
Tags: 4%, Concerns, Dimmed, Enthusiasm, Forward P/E, Forward return, High, Investors, Rich, S&P 500, Stocks, Stretched, Valuations
Financial Times (January 9)
“Unemployment in the eurozone fell back to a record low of 6.4 per cent in November, defying recent economic gloom after the number of jobless people fell almost 100,000 from a month earlier.” With the job market “proving more resilient than expected,” the ECB may worry more “about the timing of a potential cut in interest rates” as “rapid wage growth could keep price pressures elevated.”
Tags: 4%, Cut, ECB, Economic gloom, eurozone, Interest rates, Jobless, Market, November, Record, Resilient, Timing, Unemployment, Wage growth
Marketwatch (July 14)
“Only 9% of all existing mortgages in the U.S. were taken out with a rate of above 6%,” with a majority of mortgages at rates below 4%. As a result, “the supply of new homes has been severely constrained by this imbalance…. New listings — a measure of how many sellers were putting up their homes for sale — were down 27% in early July versus a year ago.”
Tags: 4%, 6%, 9%, Constrained, Existing mortgages, Homes, Imbalance, New listings, Sale, Sellers, Supply, U.S.
