Wait and see

Lots of good information coming out soon

I thought a good bit about what to cover today but, honestly, the next few days of data will tell us more than any short-term narrative I could put together.

Of note, we have home prices today and consumer confidence. Tomorrow we will have a half dozen economic indicators which aren’t as crucial as Thursday, when we get to see GDP. And then, Friday, we get the PCE read on inflation.

I’m expecting GDP to come in negative, which will be two quarters of negative GDP in a row. Call that a recession; I don’t care honestly. Employment remains strong even if it has been softening.

The question the market really cares about is what will happen in the future? Will third quarter GDP also be negative? Will unemployment start to rise? Those two things may not matter as much as what happens with inflation.

We know the first half of the year was weak and it that is already priced in. Are we through the soft patch and now things will stabilize or are we entering an even choppier period? We’ll just have to wait and see.

(Newsletter post note: it sure is amazing how much can be written about what will be written before we know what to even write about, ain’t it?)