2017.04.24

High levels of confidence don’t jibe with a slow-growing U.S. economy

From the Wall Street Journal over the weekend:

• In the months since President Donald Trump was elected, consumer and business confidence have soared, but the economy has slowed.

• Weak sales, spending and production data
• Economists have cut their expectations of economic growth for the first quarter
• Forecasters polled by Macroeconomic Advisers now expect Friday’s gross domestic product report will show the economy grew at a 0.9% annual rate in the first quarter. At the start of the year, they had penciled in growth of 2.1%
• Some of the apparent weakness in GDP is likely due to quirks in the data caused by factors such as unusual winter weather and a swing in business inventories. Still, the divergence between “hard data”-tangible measures such as car sales-and “soft data,” such as confidence and other survey-based measures, is unusual.

2017.03.01

U.S. Dollar Settles with the U.S. Economic Slowdown

USD
The Greenback failed to hit new highs vs. its counterparts with the U.S. economic slowdown and as Trump did not mention the U.S. economy plan during his speech to Congress.

The U.S. economic growth slowed in the final three months of 2016 to 1.9% versus 2.1% expected growth,  it also rose 1.6% for all of 2016, the worst performance recorded since 2011 proven by an official data. However, the U.S. consumer confidence hit 114.8 in February and U.S. home prices rose 5.8% in December 2016.

• The U.S. dollar index failed to rise vs. a basket of major currencies and settled at 111.15 pips, despite the optimistic statement of Dallas Fed’s Kaplan on interest rate hike, as he said the Fed should move “sooner rather than later.”