ACTV - The Slowdown Is Here And Markets Cheer

2024-05-20 03:26:00 ET

Summary

• Consumer confidence for April came in well below economists’ expectations (both the Conference Board and the Michigan sentiment indexes).
• The market loves itself a Goldilocks economy, where modest growth is paired with declining inflation and, of course, a better likelihood of interest rate cuts.
• With the chance of a Fed funds rate cut in June now all but off the table, investors are looking ahead to September as a more likely occurrence than the prevailing wisdom had it just a couple weeks ago.

When the first quarter Gross Domestic Product ((GDP)) numbers came out a few weeks ago, we were among the many observers who noted that the lower-than-expected growth rate (1.6 percent real quarter-on-quarter growth, annualized) was actually not all that bad, with both consumer spending and private business investment - arguably the economy’s two most important growth drivers - sustaining their recent healthy trends....

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