Welp. It was a downer of a day on Wall Street, and the luster has started to wear thin on Jerome Powell's silver dome. Analysts and traders are seriously concerned that the Fed's waited too long to loosen its grip, and we're gonna be coming in with a thump vice a nice pillow.
...The Dow dropped 512 points, or nearly 1.3%. At its session lows, the 30-stock index lost 744.22 points, or about 1.8%. The S&P 500 shed 1.3%, while the Nasdaq Composite slipped 2.2%. The Russell 2000 index, the small-cap benchmark that has rallied lately, dropped 3.6%.
Some fresh data stoked fears over a possible recession and the notion that the Federal Reserve could be too late to start cutting interest rates. Initial jobless claims rose the most since August 2023. And the ISM manufacturing index, a barometer of factory activity in the U.S., came in at 46.8%, worse than expected and a signal of economic contraction. After these releases, the 10-year Treasury yield dropped below 4% for the first time since February.
These weak data releases come a day after the Fed chose to keep rates at the highest levels in two decades, when Fed Chair Jerome Powell gave investors some hope by signaling a September rate cut is on the table.
“The data we have got since the Fed meeting signals all of a sudden that people are now worrying that maybe it isn’t a soft landing and the Fed has vacillated too long,” said Tom Fitzpatrick, managing director for global market insights at R.J. O’Brien and Associates. “The bond market is already telling you that we’re behind the curve...the Fed is more prepared to make a different mistake for fear of making a similar mistake.”
The market can see through the noise to the train in the tunnel.
...“The stock market doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry because while three Fed rate cuts may be coming this year and 10-year bond yields are falling below 4.00%, the winds of recession are coming in hard,” Rupkey said.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) jobs or employment number was not good. You'll notice you don't hear any crowing out of the Biden-Harris White House about it.
The job claims numbers came in at their highest in a year, and June's unemployment rate ticked up to 4.1%. Job openings also fell a tad.
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits jumped to its highest level in a year last week, even as the labor market remains surprisingly healthy in an era of high interest rates.
Jobless claims for the week ending July 27 climbed by 14,000 to 249,000, from 235,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. It’s the most since the first week of August last year and the 10th straight week that claims have come in above 220,000. Before that stretch, claims had remained below that level in all but three weeks this year.
The June Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) indicates real struggles on the manufacturing side of the economic engine. Weakened demand is again a sign of consumers under tremendous financial pressure.
US manufacturing activity contracted more sharply than expected last month, according to industry survey data published Thursday, deepening a recent slump on continued weak demand and falling output.
..."This is a very downbeat report underlining that the manufacturing sector continues to struggle," Pantheon Macroeconomics senior US economist Oliver Allen wrote in a note to clients.
Whatever wages workers are being paid are nowhere near what they need to keep up with the Biden-Harris inflation cycle, no matter how productive they are or what raises they've gotten. Or how often they're told they should be grateful because things are really, really good.
And it's not just the United States feeling the pinch, which also hurts our exports.
You can see manufacturing sinking everywhere the climate cult has taken hold and driven energy prices through the roof in concert with insane environmental regulation. Witness Europe...
...and we've talked about Germany smugly cutting their own throat so many times.
#Bidenomics made this mess, and it is a mess that could quickly morph into a disaster. It won't take but a tiny nudge to shove us over.
This is still the goal of Kamala Harris - to drive us literally into darkness. She and the geriatric vegetable she's been pretending runs the country have done a damn fine job of thoroughly jacking things up so far, and it's up to everyone not to let her slide on her culpability for it.
As one woman said, if Biden was so incapacitated all these years, that means it really is Kamala's economy because she was the president.
Well. It's about time she started owning this steaming pile they've left us.
Hopefully, we'll leave them.
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