It’s PMI day, the inflation debate continues and back-to-the-office vaccines.
Growth
This morning’s Purchasing Managers Indexes showed the private sector in the euro area growing at the fastest pace in 15 years, with the composite measure rising to 59.2 in June. The reading for the U.K. was even stronger, coming in at 61.7 with survey data pointing to soaring input costs. The story in Japan was less rosy as pandemic measures continued to subdue activity. PMI figures for the U.S. economy are published at 9:45 a.m. Eastern Time.
Inflation?
This morning’s data from the U.K. may increase worries about inflation ahead of the Bank of England policy decision on Thursday. In the U.S., Fed Chair Jerome Powell again said that the overshoot in inflation will likely reverse as the economy continues to reopen. He did, however, acknowledge some uncertainty, saying the drivers of inflation “have been larger than we expected and they may turn out to be more persistent than we expected.” New York Fed President John Williams said that any rise in rates is “ way off in the future.”
Vaccines
The rush back to Wall Street offices is coming with some caveats, with Morgan Stanley planning to only allow vaccinated employees into its New York sites. This follows similar moves from Bank of America Corp. and BlackRock Inc. On the global vaccine rollout, more than 2.7 billion doses have now been administered, with the U.S. accounting for 319 million. One side effect of the pandemic which was reported yesterday is the plunging U.S. birthrate.
Markets quiet
Global equity markets continue to do very little. Overnight the MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.3% while Japan’s Topix index closed 0.5% lower. In Europe the Stoxx 600 Index had slipped 0.3% by 5:50 a.m. with retailers among the worst performers. S&P 500 futures pointed to little change at the open, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 1.473%, oil was near $73.50 a barrel and gold rose.
Coming up...
The U.S. current account for the first quarter is at 8:30 a.m. PMIs are at 9:45 a.m. and new home sales numbers for May are at 10:00 a.m. The oil market will be watching inventories data at 10:30 a.m. for signs of a drawdown. Fed Governor Michelle Bowman, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren speak later. The U.S. sells $61 billion of 5-year notes and $26 billion of 2-year FRNs at 1:00 p.m.
What we've been reading
Here's what caught our eye over the last 24 hours.
And finally, here’s what Joe’s interested in this morning
The most interesting economic theme right now continues to be the stress on global supply chains. It's not really one theme, of course, but rather numerous distinct stories about shipping, trucking, chips, ports, waterways, lumberyards, homebuilders and so forth, all of which have their own idiosyncrasies that compound and multiply in surprising ways. A theme that keeps popping up, though, is how the period after the Great Financial Crisis saw a lot of supply-side atrophy. Given weak global trade, and mediocre growth in the U.S., we saw a contraction and consolidation in many industries, and now that's proving to be a problem as the economy rebounds rapidly out of the pandemic.
Another thing that keeps popping up is the idea of market power and concentration. We keep coming back to industries that are dominated by fewer and fewer players, which creates its own distinct set of issues.
Last week I talked to lumber trader Stinson Dean, who pointed out that the suppliers to the homebuilders (the companies that sell things like windows and garage doors etc.) have been consolidating, and extracting better terms. The lumberyards have also consolidated and can extract better terms. The upshot is the homebuilders have to absorb that price risk on their own balance sheet, meaning it's risky for them to commit to much activity too far out -- causing them to get more conservative about their building plans, contributing to a slower pace of new home growth.
On the flipside, some industries like trucking see an incredible amount of fragmentation. As Freightwaves CEO Craig Fuller told us on Odd Lots this week, there's been several boom-bust cycles in the industry just since 2018. And over past month or so, some 11,000 new trucking companies have entered the market.
Concentration of market power has shown up elsewhere. The shipping industry is dominated by just a few giant companies, such as Maersk, which as David Fickling has recently pointed out has been slashing capital expenditures in recent years. And of course this year has brought significant awareness to the global dependence on the Taiwan semiconductor sector when it comes to chip manufacturing.
You can't think about expanding capacity, and boosting general economic productivity, without thinking about degrees of concentration among various industries.
Joe Weisenthal is an editor at Bloomberg
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