If you guessed new record highs for equities, you would be correct.
What is being dubbed by some as the "great stay", JOLTS showed stronger than expected job openings, with low hiring and low firing. The biggest gainers in job openings were in business and professional services. The quits rate rose slightly in an encouraging sign. Overall it looked like a fairly healthy picture for the labor market and this was the October reading, so it will be interesting to see if the November data gets any sort of "pro business" election outcome push.
Fedspeak was largely all doves and they were all in favor of moving towards a more neutral over time and of course that they'll be watching the incoming data. Markets are pricing in ~70% chance of a 25bp cut at the December meeting. We'll see what Powell has to say today.
S. Korea's President declared martial law over impeachment threats that the President claims are tied to N. Korean sympathisizers in the opposition party, a martial law that lasted about 3 hours. Add that to the collapsing French government, all the various conflicts in the middle east and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
On the day ahead it's ADP, ISM Services and Powell.
XTOD: The slow-to-hire, slow-to-fire labor market continues. Private-sector hiring and firing rates ticked down in October. Quits edged up while job vacancy rates are holding steady below 5%.
XTOD: China bans exports of gallium, germanium and antimony to the US. Beijing says the commodities have "dual-use" military use. The Chinese guidance is a bit unclear, saying the "in principle" ban only applies for sales to "military users."
https://mofcom.gov.cn/zwgk/zcfb/art/2024/art_3d5e990b43424e60828030f58a547b60.html
XTOD: Extreme birth rate collapse is the biggest danger to human civilization by far
XTOD: A timely reminder that in the end productivity is everything. All else passes. The trend is not automatic. Each step is hard-won. To non-economists: Covid was not great for productivity and we should all get sick. Less productive workers were fired. Beautiful composition effect.
XTOD: the foreign exchange market resulting from the developed economies’ decision to allow the liberalization of cross-border capital flows starting in 1980. Prior to that, the main participants in this market were importers and exporters. Their transactions automatically served to lower the value of currencies of trade deficit nations and increase the value of currencies of trade surplus nations. This helped prevent excessive growth in trade imbalances. speculators became the main participants in the forex market, and as they stepped up their purchases of high-yield dollar assets, the greenback rose to levels that could never be justified given the size of US trade deficits." Koo is reminding us of what Keynes argued decades ago. A world of unfettered capital flows is inconsistent with a world of free trade because the former can overwhelm the latter, leading to distortions that suppress wages and undermine manufacturing in deficit countries. He also notes that within the US, this is a conflict between those on Wall Street who benefit from this highly distorted form of globalization, versus those who pay the cost, manufacturers and workers. "Globalization," he notes, "has brought great benefits...to capitalists, companies, and consumers, but it has had serious adverse effects on the workers in domestic manufacturing and agriculture who must compete with inexpensive products produced overseas."
XTOD: Ernest Hemingway said F. Scott Fitzgerald had a "romantic awe of [the rich] ... He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren’t it wrecked him as much as any other thing that wrecked him."
https://x.com/NickTimiraos/status/1863966418951077915
https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/1863866556968820987
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1863995164475129976
https://x.com/JohnHCochrane/status/1863948103797411853
https://x.com/michaelxpettis/status/1863811085595230598
https://x.com/morganhousel/status/1864030651906941134
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