Wall Street Journal (December 6)
“2024 is the year the global spillover implications of China’s slowdown will sink in. Advanced economies will downgrade the importance of market access in China, and Global South nations will be forced to find other engines of development.” This will lead to “a new phase of geopolitical conditions, with the anchor assumption of a rising China and declining U.S. being retired. The implications of this will be far reaching and challenging to forecast.”
Tags: 2024, Advanced economies, Assumption, Challenging, China, Downgrade, Far-reaching, Geopolitical conditions, Global South, Global spillover, Implications, Market access, Slowdown, U.S.
WARC (October 12)
“After a pandemic-driven boom, luxury sector growth rates are slowing and returning to something approaching the long-term norm.” Ultimately, a “slowdown had to come at some point – 20% growth rates are not sustainable for an extended period – but the question now being asked is how far the pendulum might swing in the opposite direction, especially as ‘aspirational’ buyers at the bottom end of the market cut back.”
Tags: Aspirational buyers, Boom, Cut back, Growth rates, Luxury sector, Pandemic, Slowdown, Sustainable
Bloomberg (September 1)
“That jump in the unemployment rate was not a reflection of companies firing workers in anticipation of a slowdown.” A “very large 700,000 increase” in job seekers “caused the labor force participation rate to jump to 62.8%, the highest since before the pandemic.”
Tags: 62.8%, Companies, Firing, Highest, Job seekers, Jump, Labor force, Pandemic, Participation rate, Slowdown, Unemployment rate, Workers
Financial Times (April 28)
“Deprived of investment opportunities abroad, Russians have piled their savings into the likes of Lukoil, Gazprom and Sberbank, which combined account for about 40 per cent of the stock market’s total value.” Marking a rebound, “Russia’s stock market has climbed to its highest level in more than a year as domestic retail investors with nowhere else to go snap up the dividend-paying stocks that sold off heavily following the invasion of Ukraine”.
Tags: 2022, Banking crisis, Bracing, Economy, Fears, Growth, Interest rates, Q1, Q4, Recession, Slowdown, U.S., Wall Street, Wobbled
Fortune (September 4)
“The Pandemic Housing Boom saw U.S. home prices spike an unprecedented 43% in just over two years. But that’s over now: Spiked mortgage rates have pushed the U.S. housing market into a sharp slowdown that could threaten some of those gains.” Estimates on potential 2023 home price changes range from +2.4% to -15%, with nearly all certain that some regions will decrease.
Tags: 43%, Gains, Home prices, Housing boom, Mortgage rates, Pandemic, Slowdown, Spike, Threaten, U.S., Unprecedented
Bloomberg (June 30)
“The Federal Reserve is cooling off the red-hot housing market as it fights to curb inflation by driving up interest rates.” The ensuing “housing slowdown is helping to solve the US real estate market’s most intractable problem: tight inventory.” New sellers are entering the market at a faster pace while there are “fewer buyers competing.” As a result, “the number of active US listings jumped 18.7% in June from a year earlier, the largest annual increase in data going back to 2017.”
Tags: Buyers, Cooling off, Fed, Housing market, Inflation, Interest rates, Intractable, Inventory, Listings, Real estate, Red-hot, Sellers, Slowdown, U.S.
Market Watch (June 27)
“Stock futures are inching higher at the start of the week as investors seemingly cling to newfound optimism that a bond rout is ending, and the Fed’s rate-hike plans will get pruned due to a global slowdown.” There are, of course, no shortage of issues like surging inflation, but Brynne Kelly suspects “the next black swan for markets could be failing power grids and electricity shortages.” These could prove “catastrophic” as we move into the “height of the summer cooling season amid rising temperatures.”
Tags: Black swan, Bond rout, Catastrophic, Electricity, Fed, Inflation, Investors, Kelly, Markets, Optimism, Power grids, Rate hike, Shortages, Slowdown, Stock futures, Summer
Bloomberg (April 12)
“The feel-good days for global markets at the end of March are firmly over.” Suddenly, everyone is afraid of economic slowing. “With monetary support rapidly receding and recession risks rising, investors are hunkering down. Companies resilient to an economic slowdown such as health care are back in favor. Ditto cash and dividend-paying stocks. Meanwhile, demand for hedging is creeping up in the options market.”
Tags: Afraid, Companies, Dividends, Feel good, Global markets, Health care, Hedging, Hunkering down, Investors, March, Monetary support, Recession, Risks, Slowdown
Wall Street Journal (October 18)
“China’s economy grew 4.9% in the third quarter from a year earlier, slowing sharply from the previous quarter’s 7.9% growth rate, as power shortages and supply-chain problems added to the impact from Beijing’s efforts to rein in the real estate and technology sectors.” A slowdown was expected, but results fell short of “the 5.1% growth forecast” economists provided last week.
Tags: Beijing, China, Economy, Forecast, Growth, Impact, Power shortages, Problems, Real estate, Slowdown, Supply chain, Technology
Bloomberg (October 13)
“The vital question for many investors has been whether the problems for speculative real estate will cause broader contagion, either through cascading losses in the financial system or through economic weakness.” The former remains unlikely, but “the second — an economic slowdown of which Evergrande is both a cause and a symptom — grows more likely with time.”
Tags: Cascading, Contagion, Economic weakness, Evergrande, Financial system, Investors, Losses, Real estate, Slowdown, Speculative, Vital
