News

I don’t think there is any reasonable basis to believe that the US consumer is going to stop spending any time soon. Yes, measures of consumer confidence are in the dumpster but those surveys — for whatever reason — are proving to be worthless in the 2020s.

Below are four snippets from recent executive commentary. Taken together they paint a remarkably united picture: the US consumer is still spending and the macro backdrop remains sturdier than almost anyone thought a few months ago, save for some small pockets like lodging.

Goldman Sachs COO John Waldron

“The U.S. economy and the U.S. consumer is showing tremendous resilience. Somewhat surprising to me, but I think you have to say the resilience in the economy is pretty pronounced. We still have a significant fiscal impulse. We still have very strong employment. We’re moving, as we said, towards more manageable tariff levels. I think that all likely leads to economic growth. I think we’re likely to avoid a recession with this baseline set of facts, but the volatility remains, and so it’s still a little bit uncertain.”

Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach

“Last time that we all spoke was at our earnings call, we had the first-quarter data, and we had up until the 28th of April, and spending trends were stable at the time. Now if you include the first 3 weeks of May, we see exactly the same. So spending trends have largely been the same. Now if you look at this a little bit closer, and then you’d say, why is that? If you look at the headlines, if you look at the sentiment surveys, and we’ve just seen one yesterday, I was surprisingly positive. So, you see a lot of rhetoric there and you see a lot of headlines and it hasn’t really translated into consumer behavior.”

American Express CEO Steve Squeri

“It’s been consistent, right? It’s really been consistent. What we’ve seen through May is what we saw through April and what we saw in March and in the first quarter. And so, goods and services consistent. Airline pretty consistent and we said that was down a little bit. I think lodging gets a little more challenged, but restaurants still very, very strong. And if you look at the individual segments — international, SME and U.S. consumer — pretty consistent to where they are. So, unless something crazy happens in June, I think when we start talking about this in July, we’re going to say the second quarter pretty much looked just like the first quarter did, FX-adjusted and all that other kind of stuff.”

Visa CFO Christopher Suh

“Payments-volume data primarily has remained in line with what we’re seeing in April, what we saw in the month of April, which means for the quarter it’s actually tracking a little bit better than Q2, again reflecting the resilience in consumer. So that’s the U.S.”

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan

“When you look at it in the aggregate, about $1.7 trillion has moved from our consumer accounts into the economy year-to-date through May 15th or so. That’s up about 6 % from last year. That’s a faster rate of growth than the fourth quarter of last year and the fourth quarter of the prior year. So it’s accelerating during the year. And, you know, it’s not people getting ahead of the tariffs — this is going all over the economy. And that’s because people are in relatively good shape… The answer is: the consumers are spending money. That means the US economy has an anchor to windward that very few economies have, because that huge consumer base spends. And our customer base supports that across the board.”

That’s a remarkably consistent view from people with access to the best consumer data. That could change but I don’t think it will until there is some real government austerity or job losses.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

It’s good to be back after a wonderful trip to the Finance Magnates Africa Summit in Cape Town, which was a great event. What a spectacular city, though I didn’t have nearly enough time to see it.

I managed to miss the reversal on EU tariffs and the TACO fun while the US dollar has continued to slide. The tariff court ruling changes the state of play and the lack of progress on US trade deals ahead of July 9 has turned into something of a meme.

Today the US dollar has bounced somewhat and eyes will be on economic data, though I don’t see the potential for game changers. Up first at 10 am ET is the factory orders report for April, including durable goods revisions. It’s almost impossible to get a clean view on the industrial side of the economy through all the tariff noise.

Also at 10 am ET, we get the April JOLTS report. Some weakness in job openings has crept in and it’s an indicator the Fed watches closely. The consensus is for 7.1m job openings.

On the Fed docket we get Goolsbee, Cook and Logan. For more, see the economic calendar.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

The USD remains on the
backfoot as the support from the more hawkish repricing in interest rates
expectations got exhausted a couple of weeks ago. The market is now in line with the Fed’s baseline
projection of two cuts in 2025 and we will likely need strong US data to price
out the remaining rate cuts and give the greenback a boost.

The data for now has been good but not strong enough to make the market to price out the two cuts expected by year-end. The next key data will be the prices paid component in the ISM Services PMI tomorrow, the US Jobless Claims figures on Thursday, the NFP report on Friday and the CPI next week.

On the CHF side, the Swiss CPI today came mostly in line with expectations and didn’t change much in terms of market pricing. The market is still expecting 56 bps of easing by year-end with a 35% chance of a 50 bps cut at the upcoming SNB meeting.

On the 4 hour chart, we can see that the price broke below the key support at the 0.8185 level and started to consolidate just beneath it. This is where the sellers are piling in with a defined risk above the level to position for a drop into the 0.8038 level next. The buyers, on the other hand, will want to see the price rising back above the 0.8185 level to start targeting the 0.8350 level next.

This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at www.forexlive.com.