Stocks and Dollars

This week’s economic data continued to point toward sustained economic growth. The employment situation improved at a better-than-expected pace in January with 243K additional jobs added. Personal income and spending data indicated that personal incomes rose modestly in December, but slightly lower consumer spending resulted in a higher savings rate

You’d be forgiven if you began this week feeling a bit glum. With the Federal Reserve downgrading their forecasts for economic growth and reinforcing their pessimism with a commitment to leave interest rates at low levels until late 2014, who wouldn’t be left feeling a bit melancholy? Even more, who,

The past week ended with a string of better-than-expected data releases from key major economies, suggesting the global recovery may avoid a more worrisome downturn. Mostly better than expected PMI’s from Europe, UK, China and the US were supplemented on Friday by a much stronger US employment report than was

The Jan. NFP cards have been dealt and US equities are up more than +1% on the back of the much better than expected figures (243k vs. consensus 140k on the headline number, 257k vs. 160k for private payrolls). In FX, ZAR (South African Rand) gaining +1% vs. USD so

On the heels of a better-than-expected print for nonfarm payrolls, today’s ISM non-manufacturing survey lifts expectations for further job gains in the coming months. Indeed, the employment component soared to 57.4 the highest level in almost six years. In a typical month, the ISM non-manufacturing index comes out just

Another week closes with the promise of a deal on the Greek PSI debt swap. The urgency for such a deal is rising with a hard deadline of 13 February approaching. The coming week will be a question of sequencing. The coming days should see Greece agree with the Troika

The immediate reaction to the strong US employment data was rather bifurcated, so while USDCAD AUDUSD and USDJPY have largely followed our script in the wake of the report the action against the European majors have so far not done so, likely due to the very significant upside surprise

PMIs from most of the world increased in January, signalling an improvement in global industry.

For Europe, the numbers support our view that the sharpest fall in production in this recession happened in Q4 11 and that the European economies are on course for positive growth rates again in Q2 12.