27 Aug 2024 TwentyFour Blog Powell’s Masterplan allows for earlier intervention In his headlining speech at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, Federal Reserve (Fed) chair Jerome Powell’s message to the market was clear. Read more
22 Aug 2024 TwentyFour Blog Fixed income in strong position with Fed cut a done deal It feels as though market news hasn’t taken a holiday so far this summer. From the US on Wednesday we got the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) July 30-31 policy meeting, and revisions to a whole year of non-farm payrolls (NFP) data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS). Read more
19 Aug 2024 TwentyFour Blog Jackson Hole: 25 or 50? The title of this year’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium – essentially a short holiday camp for the world’s economists and central bankers – is “Reassessing the effectiveness and transmission of monetary policy”, an important question given the remarkable resilience developed market economies have shown to the sharpest interest rate hiking cycle we have seen in four decades. Read more
14 Aug 2024 TwentyFour Blog US inflation makes case for (small) September rate cut Recent US Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data brought good news for investors and central banks. Read more
6 Aug 2024 TwentyFour Blog A couple of non-recessionary surveys With US economic data driving very large moves in the last few days, we think it is worth highlighting two data releases that were published yesterday. The Institute of Supply Management (ISM) Services and the Senior Loan Officer Survey spoke of an economy that is stronger than some of the recent price action might suggest. Read more
5 Aug 2024 TwentyFour Blog Labour market dents soft landing sentiment If you were on vacation last week, your holiday blues wouldn’t have been helped when you looked at your screens this morning, given how quickly sentiment has changed, mainly on the back of one data point. Read more
19 Jul 2024 TwentyFour Blog Politics won’t trump data for the Fed The last few weeks have seen former President Donald Trump establish a lead over current President Joe Biden across polls in the run-up to November’s US election. Even though it is early days and a lot can change before November (including the Democrat candidate), it is worth considering what a second Trump term might mean for the world economy and for fixed income markets. Read more
5 Jul 2024 TwentyFour Blog Labour market cooling justifies Fed’s dovish lean One of the drivers of the dovish pivot from the Federal Reserve (Fed) in December was the acknowledgement that the risks to the policy outlook had become more two-sided. In other words, while higher rates were still needed to tame inflation, the Fed saw a risk that staying restrictive for too long and risk damaging a labour market that has so far shown remarkable resilience. Read more
3 Jul 2024 Outlook Why Europe has jumped ahead of the US for fixed income value The forecast-defying strength of the US economy has been one of the key drivers of financial markets in recent quarters, but as economic prospects diverge, Europe is where we see the better relative value in fixed income today. Read more
13 Jun 2024 TwentyFour Blog CPI and FOMC post mortem Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation as an entrée was well received by the diners, prompting a 15 basis points (bps) rally in the 10-year Treasury. The main course though, was met with some adverse critiques as the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) delivered a slightly more hawkish dot plot than expected. Read more
7 Jun 2024 TwentyFour Blog US default landscape revisited From a US high yield (HY) perspective, the month of May turned out to be one of note – for the first time since December 2022, no US HY defaults were recorded, with not one instance of a bankruptcy filing or a missed interest/principal payment. Read more
28 May 2024 Market Update The duration deliberation - to extend or not to extend? TwentyFour Asset Management’s Chris Bowie, takes a closer look at how he is thinking about duration within fixed income portfolios and shows how following conventional wisdom on duration might prove costly for some investors this year. Read more