Economic Outlook – 3 May 2020
US An additional 3.8 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance, bringing total initial claims over the past six weeks to over 30 million. This dwarfs past recessions. With so many jobs lost and more at [...]
Economic Outlook – 26 April 2020
US Oil prices went negative for the first time in history as the evaporation of demand collided with supply that literally cannot be shut off quickly enough. Specifically, the expiring front-month WTI contract price fell [...]
Economic Outlook – 19 April 2020
US Retail sales plunged 8.7% in March, as a 26.0% surge in grocery store sales was drowned out by historic declines in both durable (furniture -27.0%, autos -26.0%) and nondurable (clothing -50.0%, restaurants -27.0%) discretionary [...]
Economic Outlook – 12 April 2020
US The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index tumbled 8.1 points in March. This was the largest one-month drop in the index’s history. This drop, however, did not capture the full extent of the deterioration in [...]
Economic Outlook – 5 April 2020
US Employers reported payrolls declined by 701K workers in March. This was much worse than expected, yet it only hints at what’s to come. The report “predated many coronavirus-related business and school closures that occurred [...]
Economic Outlook – 29 March 2020
Most of last week's data releases can be ignored as they are from before the spreading of the coronavirus and the data releases are in fact outdated since the economy is in another place now. [...]