00:00 julie
We’ve got some breaking news right now. Our personal consumption expenditures (PCE) were in line with expectations. Remember, this is September, so it’s up 3/10ths of 1% month-on-month and 2.8% year-over-year. If you strip out volatile food and energy costs, you again get 2/10% growth, in line with previous estimates. That’s consistent with last month’s growth, by the way. it’s beautiful
00:26 julie
From a PCE perspective, the inflation front remains stable. We also got personal income and expenses. Again, as a reminder, these are September numbers due to the government shutdown. Personal income rose 4/10 of 1%. This is somewhat better than expected growth. Personal spending increased by 3/10 of 1%. That’s all the September data the government has provided us with from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Uh, we also got the University of Michigan’s take. This is an updated
00:56 julie
number. This is a preliminary reading for December. The number was slightly better than estimated, with the overall number at 53.3 and 52 being the average estimate among economists. Michigan’s current situation is slightly weaker than the estimated 50.7. Well, expect better. Well, what’s interesting is that we’re also seeing a slowdown in inflation expectations, whether it’s one year from now or five to 10 years from now. So, putting all of this together, Michigan’s sentiment data
1:23 julie
It looks relatively positive here. We’re seeing the major U.S. stock indexes move higher as a result, but we’d like to get more details on what’s going on in the market today, whether it’s a reaction to that or the broader reaction. To that end, please contact our Markets Editor Jared Blikre for more information.
1:40 Jared Brickell
Thank you, Julie. Well, yes, inflation appears to be benign at the moment. To be fair, when we get the CPI data for September, uh, what was it a month ago? Uh, we can figure out what those numbers are this morning. However, as you said, the consumer confidence data from the University of Michigan is new and any reaction we get on the price side, which looks bullish at the moment, is more likely to be due to that and the inflationary element in it, which
2:02 Jared Brickell
Consumers’ inflation expectations appear to be somewhat under control, or at least not out of control. We see that the Dow is up about 219 points on the day, a gain of 45 basis points, or half of 1%. We also look at Nasdaq. Uh, also at the highs, looks to be just above the early highs after the open this morning, and the S&P 500, much like the Dow Jones, is up about 4/10 of 1%. I will check
2:29 Jared Brickell
The Russell 2000, well, is in the red today after hitting its first record high since October. Also, let’s check it out via microbroadcast because they also hit an all-time high yesterday. They were in the green earlier and are slightly red now, but as I’ve been saying, this is the time of year when volatility goes down. This is VIX. You can see it was green there briefly, but lower volatility is a good thing. So you want to see red, which usually means stocks are higher. let us check
2:52 Jared Brickell
In the bond market, so far, the bond market has not played much of a role. It’s only a fraction of a basis point higher, so not much of a change. The 10-year rate is 4.11, and then the 30-year rate is 4.77%. That’s about a basis point increase, but not a huge amount. I also like to look at the U.S. dollars, which I barely touch. A lot of chopping. So, let’s take a look at the sector in action. Just before reporting, guess what? We look similar now. At the time, communications services were in the lead, with technology in second place.
3:15 Jared Brickell
This is the current situation. Materials then rose about 7/10%, with both energy and consumer discretionary outperforming. So a lot of the cyclical sectors here are green, even though the industrial sector looks like it’s just treading water. The only industry to post a loss was utilities. That’s down about 2/10 of 1%. Let’s see what Nasdaq is doing. Nvidia had a good day yesterday, I think it was up about 1% or 2%. It’s a bit red today, but I
3:40 Jared Brickell
It does say that communication services are at the forefront. In this space, Alphabet, Google gained 1%, and Meta gained two-thirds of 1%. I want to show you that a lot of the dark green here is what happens in semiconductors. So let’s switch gears a bit and look at Nvidia, which is down slightly, but for the rest of the companies, we see Intel up almost 5%, Micron up over 4%, Western Digital, Lumentum up over 3%. There are some nice deep green spaces there. and
4:06 Jared Brickell
Well, it’s a very similar story in software, although not quite as dark green, but Salesforce is having another strong day. Up 3.5%, Adobe rose 4%. I also want to check out cryptocurrency, uh, because it can sometimes be sensitive to inflation and sometimes react to some of these reports. Bitcoin fell 1.79% on the day. Not really seeing much reaction here. Julie, a little red to get you out of here, but uh, the reports haven’t changed much.
4:32 julie
Jared, thank you very much. Appreciate it.