USA has confirmed a recession and down turn started from Aug 07 and recession has continued for 16 months so far, it will be the longest recession (but very slight so far) other than great depression. However, recession confirmation is a extremely difficult task, its starting date usually require # of revised and changes. Also, this time, it doesn't follow the tradition way (2 consistent quarters with negative GDP increase) to confirm a recession (as i shared b4, it doesn't have to follow the tradition way).
However, the tradition way do give us some insight about when this economic mess will end. In the past 30 years, USA has experienced 6 recessions, the GDP growth only show 2 quarters in negative position. That means, if recession was started in Jun /Jul 08 (based on tradition way), one should be able to confirm it will end at around Mar or Jun 09 based on historically pattern. Once again, head back to the "real" recession period started from Aug 07, the recession period this time will be around 19 months to 22 months.
Please don't be mislead by my comment and thinking the end of recession = recover = huge gain in stock market. It just means it is a start of recovery and how long the recovery will take is an unknown. The worst scenario is a extremely slow GDP growth in the coming 10 -20 years like Japan. Hopefully, it won't happen.
- US Nov ISM manufacturer index down to 34.2 (worse than expect 36.2);
- US Nov ISM service index down to 37.3 (worse, 42.0)
- US 3Q wages up 2.8% vs prior yr from -2.6% in Q2, but lower than historical average of 3.6%.
- US latest weekly jobless claim down to 509k (better, 540k) but continue jobless claim rise to 4.09M, highest since 1982 (to be fair, today USA's workforce is 50% more than 1982, so it is in fact still better than 1982) • US Nov cut 533k job (worse, - 335k) and unemployment rate rise to 6.7% or 7.3M in total (better, 6.8%)
- Canada 3Q GDP up 1.3% vs prior yr (better, 0.9%), but 4Q forecast is not good;
- Canada Nov cut 71k job (worse, - 25k) and unemployment rate rise to 6.3%
- Europe ECB cut interest rate from 3.25% to 2.5%;
There is another worry about deflation. In my opinion, it is less likely to happen. Yes, oil price and food price fall more than 50% from peak, but it doesn't fall too much compare to prior year. Also, core inflation is calculated excluding oil and food price. Other than home price (which has already fall 17%), retail, electronic, utility, telecom cost will not decrease too much to cause a deflation.
Market:
It is once again interesting to see how the market interpret the job cut. Investors hope the unemployment result will force the globe government to have additional intervention to boost economy.
In fact, the unemployment results look funny: how can job cut higher than expect by 200k while unemployment rate 0.1% lower than expect? Those 2 results are not consistent to each other. As one should remember in Oct job cut of 240k and cause a rise in unemployment rate from 6.1% to 6.5%. Why 535k job cut only cause a rise of another 0.2%?
There are 2 reasons: 1) people who get lead off gave up to looking for a new job; 2) cuz to define a person is "unemployment", that person has to look for jobs for 4 consistent week. Therefore, we should expect the unemployment rate to catch up in Dec. It should rise to at least 7.1-7.2% (even if there is no more job cut, you wish!!)
So if the equity market walks along with economic data, then the market will fall in Jan 09. Again, this is just my reasonable guess only.
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