Weekly Commentary

I should never doubt the US Consumer.  If you believed the recent Consumer Confidence Survey, the US Consumer should have been holding onto their pocketbooks this shopping season.  Consumer Confidence is incredibly low according to the survey by the University of Michigan.  Looking back over a 50-year period, the survey suggested the consumer was pretty […]

I concluded two weeks in SE Asia, simultaneously digesting incoming data from the United States and watching real-time economics play out in Asia. Macroeconomic themes that I saw play out firsthand: The property market slowdown in China. Slower luxury goods consumption (visited numerous luxury goods shops/malls). Apple is an exception, as they are as busy […]

I write this post from Hong Kong, my first trip back to Asia post the pandemic. The opportunity to visit with large capital allocators including our friends at JPMorgan and witness China’s largest single shopping day of the year on November 11th provided a great backdrop for the visit. China is critical to the global […]

The recent jobs report should give some reprieve to the Fed’s rapid rate increase cycle. The U.S. economy added 150,000 jobs in October and the unemployment rate rose to 3.9%. On a revised basis, job growth is now averaging 204,000 over the last 3 months compared to the unrevised 266,000 jobs gained in September. 1 2 […]

Americans increasingly dipped into their savings during the third quarter. The personal saving rate dropped to 3.8% in the third quarter from 5.2% in the second quarter. Consumer spending rose 4%, powered in large part by discretionary purchases on things like vacation, air travel, and gambling despite continuing inflation and elevated borrowing costs. 1 2 With […]

Typically, under ordinary circumstances, bond investors expect to get paid more for holding a long-term bond than a short-term bond, as more uncertainty in the future deserves to be compensated. This is what a normal yield curve looks like. 1 Over the last 15 months the yield curve has been inverted, meaning investors were paid […]

Are we at the doorstep of a disinflation or deflationary period? The latest report on core Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) would suggest not. Excluding food and energy, prices rose 4.1% year-over-year in September. 1 Further, core services prices, excluding housing, continue to inflate. 2 Keep in mind, services consumption (things like transportation, medical care, and […]

Phillips & Company is privileged to service thousands of investors, from foundations and family offices to CEOs and those trying to save for retirement. We also get to interview capital allocators and asset managers around the world. This combination gives us what I believe is great insight into what the supply of money is doing […]

Equity markets declined in the third quarter after the strong market rally seen in the first half of the year. 1 Take a look at how we see the coming quarter by clicking on this link to our Q4 2023 Look Ahead. After a prolonged period of rate increases, the U.S. consumer is starting to […]

In his recent comments, Fed Chairman Powell messaged more uncertainty around the continued rate increase cycle. He covered the usual list of things working for and against the U.S. economy. You can read all the ebbs and flows of the economy in any one of our earlier blogs. Skipping ahead to the conclusion, we need […]