Jul 21, 2017 | US Economy
Although coincident growth data is holding up for now, there are a number of macro “red flags” at present, in particular flattening yield curves (despite the recent bounce, US 2s10s is still 34bps flatter YTD) and falling excess-liquidity conditions. Yield curves are...
Mar 24, 2017 | US Equities
(from our Weekly of 21st February) As we have been noting, the market remains in a risk-on regime, with positive momentum, falling volatility and confirmation from various inter-market relationships such as cyclical stocks outperforming high dividend stocks, high...
Apr 15, 2016 | US Economy
Profit margins are declining, and we expect them to fall much further. As you can see from the chart below, Variant Perception’s leading indicator for wages does a very good job of leading US corporate profit margins by a little over a year and a half. The message is...
Nov 18, 2015 | Uncategorized
The corporate profit cycle is now turning down, and our leading economic indicators point to further declines in return on equity (ROE) and profit margins. This is not a short-term call on equity markets but a major structural factor investors should bear in mind in...
Jun 2, 2015 | Leading Indicators, US Economy
There has been a sharp divergence between ISM services and non-services in the US. Many of our leading indicators for manufacturing have pointed to weakness. This suggests demand is tilting away from manufacturing and towards the service sector. The breakdown of the...
Apr 29, 2015 | US Economy
(The following is from our December Leading Indicator Watch (LIW), released December 4th, 2014. The LIW is a monthly report giving a summary of all or our main leading indicators, allowing clients to forecast early on where the business cycle in major countries is...
Apr 28, 2015 | US Economy
(from our Leading Indicator Watch from March 5th, 2015) Our leading indicator for US house prices is supportive of an improvement in price growth. One of the inputs that drives our leading index is the number of months’ supply of new homes. The continued fall in...
