Marc Chandler – Parsing The Macroeconomic Data, The Odds Of A Recession, Levels To Watch In The US Dollar and Interest Rates, Fed Policy, and International Markets
Marc Chandler, Managing Partner at Bannockburn Global Forex and Editor of the Marc to Market website, joins us to unpack another turbulent week in the markets, a look into better than anticipated economic data, whether or not we are heading towards a recession in the US, global trade tensions between the US and China, key factors for the US dollar and interest rates, the propensity of the Fed to cut rates this year, and international markets tempered by falling oil prices.
Key Insights discussed:
Tariff concerns ended up fueling buying into late Q1, potentially pulling demand forward from the future. Mark described this as: “We are eating our corn seed, and bringing forward economic activity that may have been a Q2 or Q3 event.”
Survey data, which is considered soft economic data, continues to be weak; but the real sector hard data, so far, has been holding up fairly well. There was a good inflation reading and a solid jobs number, so hard data holding up better than soft data.
Several weeks ago, in mid-April, all we read or heard about in financial media were calls for an imminent recession or even another depression. Now after a few weeks of the markets rallying, and stronger than expected economic data, those proclamations for an immediate contraction have become more muted. So are all those concerns now off the table?
Mark doesn’t believe a recession is imminent, but notes “We did have one quarter now of negative growth, and then you look a what the Atlanta Fed says, tracking a 1.1% annualized pace for Q2… but I’m still in the camp that there is a shadow crossing America around now. We are only in the early stages of it, like a slow moving trainwreck.”
There are the drying up of container shipment from China to the US ports, and that activity is slowing down.
“It’s possible that we see through all this – that this is just noise, but I think something fundamental is going on when the worlds two largest economies have an embargo against one another. And that’s what these high tariffs mean. It doesn’t make sense really to trade with each other.”
“You’ve got the ports and then you have the trucks… the logistics companies. This all doesn’t even take into account yet all the layoffs in the US government or the restrictions in immigration…and, the consumer boycott in Europe and Canada against US brands, and the drying up of tourism from foreign bookings.”
Marc is concerned that we are at the edge of an economic contraction and notes that some analyst point to certain segments of the economy that appear to already be in a recession.
The US dollar has moved down to either side of that 100 level of support. Marc points out that “the dollar index peaked about a week before President Trump’s inauguration, and it has been sliding ever since. He noted that it was significant that the dollar index got back up above that 100 level, because he sees an inverse head and shoulders bottom with a neckline at 100.20. If we can get some closes above that level, then it projects up to 102.40 or so.”
Marc goes on to note the better-than-expected jobs data, the rise in interest rates, and the dollar momentum indicators that were oversold as more reasons he is expecting a bounce in the greenback.
With regards to Fed policy, the market moved from pricing in 4 rate cuts to 3 rate cuts this year, but that is still more dovish than the central bank’s messaging of 2 expected rate cuts in 2025.
In addition to the bounce in the US equity markets and US dollar, we’ve also seen a bounce in international markets. Marc remains skeptical of the health of the global economy, and points to the sell down in oil prices as the markets looking forward to less growth globally.
