JHMC News and Press, John Hancock Multifactor Consumer Discretionary From 02/11/22

The January U.S. CPI report indicated a higher pace of inflation than many observers expected. The price level of the core CPI advanced 0.6% month-over-month, largely driven by price hikes in retail goods. While we believe the CPI report increases the probability of the U.S. Federal R...

U.S. retailers have endured multiple supply chain disruptions during the pandemic – and the costs are huge. The pandemic has affected just about all retailers’ supply chains. The Refinitiv Restaurant Same Store Sales index took a big plunge into negative territory in...

The goal of the DDM is to quickly and easily utilize available resources of an asset to understand what the intrinsic value of that asset is based on certain market and company expectations. If the required return component of the equation rises without expectations of higher company ...

Due to inflation, several retailers are already dealing with higher cost of goods and services and dealing with the supply chain crisis. Consumers’ short-term inflation expectations rose again, with the median cost of living increase for next year pushing up from 5.7% to 6.0%. ...

Retail sales have posted gains in four consecutive months but November is the slowest pace of the four. Most categories were up in November though breadth was weaker than in October. Retail inventories have improved for several industries in recent months. For further detail...

More than two-thirds of the US population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, most students have resumed in-person learning, and the economy, as a whole, is booming. This holiday season is likely to bring more of the same as shoppers remain uncertain about the path of the pandemic a...

Investment grade credit fundamentals remain healthy, but supply chain issues are contributing to the overarching inflationary environment, with different impacts across sectors. Across sectors, companies are responding to cost increases by raising, or attempting to raise, prices to co...

Chen: TSA scanned the highest numbers of post-pandemic air travelers (adj. for seasonality) during the Thanksgiving week. Black Friday + Cyber Monday sales showed some sign of falling short of high expectation. Chen: Still reason to be constructive on equity markets. For fur...

The latest IHS Markit US Sector PMI revealed that six of the seven broad sectors tracked by the surveys reported higher output in November. Despite some of the supply chain problems having eased in November, the extent to which production growth had been constrained is consistent with...

Historically, viruses tend to mutate and become less deadly over time. Consumers are buying again, so I still expect this holiday shopping season to set all-time records. The good news was that the October and September payroll reports were revised up to 546,000 and 379,000. ...