Daily Economic Update: June 5, 2025

ADP Is Always Volatile

In my experience the ADP report rarely provides much of a read through to the Jobs report on Friday, nonetheless ADP employment came in light at +37K.  Offering a conflicting signal the ISM Services employment component increased slightly, though remains relatively weak.  Overall the ISM services index fell into contraction for the first time in nearly a year, the reason, you guessed it, uncertainty caused by tariffs.

Nevertheless the S&P was ever so slightly up to 5,971.

Guesses Followed By Excuses

Your guess for the read through to Jobs on Friday is as good as mine.  And of course no matter the number we’re likely to hear some form of narrative as to how it does or doesn’t yet show the impact of tariffs, or the impact of immigration, DOGE, or whatever else.

No matter the outcome of Friday’s jobs report some economist will be sure come up with some excuse as to why their job guess was wrong.

We’re A Service Based Economy

In the meantime the weakness ISM showed in the service sector was enough to send bond yields lower, with the 2Y treasury now at 3.89% and the 10Y yield falling to 4.37%, both down solidly from the day prior.

“Uncertainty Remains High”

Says Tiff Maclen, Bank of Canada governor, as the BoC held their policy rate at 2.75%.  I’m pretty sure what all economies need is to hear more officials stating the obvious. 

We’ll get to hear from the ECB today, I think I’m willing to bet that “uncertainty” makes an appearance.

Maybe Rules Solve Some of This

The Hoover Institute recently honored John Taylor.  Every so often some central banker or media outlook remembers the Taylor Rule.  Economist John Cochrane reported that Fed Governor Waller spoke about the possible benefits of having rules as part of the policy toolkit. With so much tension and pressure on Central Banks facing criticism in some circles that they are being too slow to cut rates and pressure from others not to take their eye of inflation, maybe they can fall back to rules as a way to help alleviate the tension.

Because when vibes fail, math has to pick up the slack.

As Cochrane summarized:  

“The Fed wants people now to believe it will be tough on inflation in the future, so that today’s inflation-output tradeoff is favorable. But once the future comes, the Fed will want to goose the economy with some inflation. People know that, so they expect inflation and the Fed face a poor tradeoff today. Somehow the Fed has to commit today to do things it will not want to do in the future. A rule helps to do that. That is special about the Fed.”

Waller talking about Taylor rules isn’t new, he did it in this BIS speech in October 2024 and we talked about his thoughts on Taylor Rules back in March 2024.

Uncertainty Is The New Certainty

The Fed Beige book showed elevated uncertainty across districts, so you might as well spend the rest of the day worrying about tariffs, debt levels, geopolitics, AI and whatever bothers you.

Since we can’t solve all our troubles, let's just read some XTOD’s.

XTOD’s:

XTOD: The Senate Banking Committee plans to eliminate all mandatory funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and restrict the pay of many Federal Reserve employees

XTOD: The Beige Book just put the stamp of approval on the recession call.  In the past six weeks, the economy has shifted from “little changed” to “declined slightly”.  There you have it.  Fully 75% of the country is now in either contraction or stagnation mode, up from around 50% in the April 23rd Book. I know – how does that comport with a +4.6% real GDP growth forecast for Q2 out of the Atlanta Fed?  The answer:  it’s not too difficult to generate the illusion of GDP growth when imports fall out of bed as they did in April. Looking at the sequential monthly pattern of the “hard” data, the economy is losing momentum at a fast clip.

XTOD: Finance has four simple rules: maintain a clear mind, figure out asymmetries, detect circularities, and never talk to idiots.

XTOD: Acquiring knowledge is easy, the hard part is knowing what to apply and when. 

That’s why all true learning is “on the job.”   Life is lived in the arena.

XTOD: Confidence is king in our game. To get the most out of EVERY player on our roster, we need to find ways to help them ALL believe in themselves. How we treat them, communicate with them, teach them and the relationships we build with them all play a major role. Never forget, this is THEIR game, we are here to help, teach, mentor and support.

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Daily Economic Update: June 4, 2025

Yeah, we’ve got ‘em

Jobs that is, 7.4 million job openings. The internals were pretty steady.  Who has the upper hand? It’s a bit of “it depends”. If you work in healthcare, great, in other industries the story is more mixed.

But at least a few things are going nuclear.

Radioactive Facebook?

When I think of social media companies and the term “radioactive”, I tend to associate them in a pejorative way, one in which both can cause harm.  But nowadays when social media is going radioactive, it literally means they are buying nuclear power, specifically to power AI that sits inside data centers.  Yesterday, Meta announced they’ve entered into a 20-year agreement to buy nuclear power from Constellation Energy’s Clinton nuclear facility in Illinois. 

20 years seems like forever in the AI timeline, but things take time. Like growing the Federal debt level.

Like Radioactive Decay, There Are Exponents

Speaking of things that seem exponential, Ray Dalio promotion and his fears of the U.S. decline.  Yesterday, Ray promoted his new book, “How Countries Go Broke” with a LinkedIn post.

In the post, Dalio reminds us that no matter how you cut it, even when you can print and tax, credit cycle dynamics are the same as Hyman Minsky theorized and we discussed back in January.  

Dalio uses the human circulatory system as his analogy. Deficits are like plague, the deficits drive the supply of debt, the amount of which can overwhelm demand and act as plague breaking off, which ultimately causes a heart attack. Central banks’ can print to try to alleviate the blockage, but it distorts the normal flow of the system and doesn’t solve the problem. For Dalio the only solution is austerity and the accompanying lower rates.

Both Dalio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent both share a solution that is focused on 3% interest rates, reducing the budget deficit to 3% of GDP.

But What If You Created The Circulatory System In The First Place?

That’s likely what MMT proponents would retort to Ray’s analogy, after all, it’s your system, your currency, only you can cause the heart attack.  The debt Dalio’s worried about, that’s not plague, it’s actually the blood, if you don’t create the money, the system stops. And interest service on debt, that’s nothing more than a policy choice.  The real constraint isn’t the debt or the interest costs, it’s inflation.  Unless you have inflation, you have fiscal space and the MMT crowd would say you should use it.

And Speaking Of Inflation

Fed Governor Lisa Cook didn’t sound overly convinced that inflation won’t remain a problem in light of trade policies and other factors.

Bridging Common Ground

What if both Dalio and the MMT crowd are right?  What if you just need a way to connect them.  Perhaps there’s where the concept of Fiscal R-Star comes into play.  Remember, this concept is the equivalent of the neutral rate of interest for monetary policy, it’s the interest rate where fiscal policy is neutral.  In essence it’s the idea that deficits can be destabilizing, but only when they exceed the economy’s ability to absorb them without excessive inflation or crowding out.

Just Say What’s On Your Mind: “It’s A Disgusting Abomination”

One Big Beautiful turd?  Maybe, at least if you’re Elon. He’s certainly not ascribing to MMT - he tends to be a fiscal theory of the price level guy.  In a sense, good for Musk for calling out the pork in this bill, as someone who at least reportedly cares about government waste, he at least needs to be consistent.

But That’s A Problem For Another Day

Until the fiscal problem is our fiscal problem, it doesn’t seem to be a problem (for now). The S&P rose to 5,970 led by AI chip stocks and optimism that falls into the TACO trade narratives.

The 2Y treasury yield moved up to 3.96% and the 10Y was at 4.47%, both flirting with their somewhat key levels.

We’ll see what ISM Services and the Bank of Canada has in store today. 

Until then you can debate fiscal narratives.

XTOD’s:

XTOD: Bitcoin’s whole story is a staged illusion, scripted by insiders to convince you governments and institutions are “all in” — and that this market is booming on real demand.  

This is the LARGEST bubble in human history, set to go down as the largest financial scandal ever.  Ask yourself: If Bitcoin is so decentralized and powerful…Why do the same few entities control the narrative, the wallets, and the laws?  It's all smoke and mirrors. Here’s proof. 🧵

XTOD: "Diplomacy turns out to be quite different from reality TV and real estate. The best diplomacy is conducted secretly, not on live TV. And when a national security strategy goes awry, bankruptcy is not an option. There is no Chapter 11 for a failed foreign policy."

XTOD: hot ai summer lfg…lots of great releases coming!

XTOD: In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people x.com/matt_vanswol/s…

XTOD: Learn to ask, “If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?” 

Don’t ever arrive at the office or in front of your computer without a clear list of priorities. You’ll just read unassociated e-mail and scramble your brain for the day.    Compile your to-do list for tomorrow no later than this evening. I don’t recommend using digital to-do lists, because it is possible to add an infinite number of items. I use a standard piece of paper folded in half three times, which fits perfectly in the pocket and limits you to noting only a few items.   There should never be more than two mission-critical items to complete each day. Never. It just isn’t necessary if they’re actually high-impact.   If you are stuck trying to decide between multiple items that all seem crucial, as happens to all of us, look at each in turn and ask yourself, If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?  To counter the seemingly urgent, ask yourself: What will happen if I don’t do this, and is it worth putting off the important to do it?

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Daily Economic Update: June 3, 2025

Sorry, Busy Rating Private Credit Deals

Sorry I was busy rating private credit deals and didn’t see what happened in markets yesterday. Have you seen these headlines, rating agency Egan-Jones has rated some 3,000 private credit deals with a team of just 20 analysts.  I figure I can get to work and rate a solid 150 deals in the next couple of months if I stop writing this blog.  Why do private credit ratings matter and why is this even a story? Well it matters for institutional allocators who want to invest their insurance or pension capital in private credit funds.  It’s unknown to me whether banks look at any of these ratings, but the story of banks effectively “re-tranching” themselves by lending to private credit funds rather than making the loans that private credit makes to mid-market businesses. Nonetheless it’s not lost on everyone that a loan carrying a double-digit interest rate is probably pretty risky, but investment grade?  Nevermind I’ll just get back to the stack of 150 deals I’ve been assigned and rate them as high as I can.  

Rating private credit deals is probably more interesting than hearing about tariffs.

Will Trump and Xi meet this week? 

Despite signs that things are moving the wrong direction between the U.S. and China’s trade dispute, there was some optimism that Trump and Xi might speak as soon as this week.  And some optimism is all you need to send stocks higher.  The S&P edged up to 5,936.

Bonds didn’t fare as well, with the yield curve steepening some despite weaker than expected manufacturing data.  As of the time of this writing, the 2Y yield was 3.95% and the 10Y 4.45%. The narrative surrounding yields continues to focus both on the short-term inflationary impact of tariffs and the longer-term deficit concerns. 

Or maybe yields and stocks are all just a growth story, after all the Atlanta Fed GDP Now is estimating 4.6% GDP for 2Q.

Double My Steel Please

On the day we’ll get some labor market signals from the JOLTS report and await whether tariffs on steel and aluminum go up to 50%.

Back to rating—only 149 deals to go,” or “If you need me, I’ll be printing triple-Bs.”

XTODs

XTOD: It’ll soon be 2 years that Real US 10s rates have been at or around 2%.   The only other recent period when a sustained level close to or above 2% was observed started in late 2005 and ended with GFC.  2% real is very taxing.

XTOD: In the US housing market, there are currently 34% more sellers than buyers. Sellers haven't outnumbered buyers by this much ever in data going back to 2013: Redfin. Redfin expects home prices to drop 1% by the end of the year as a result. h/t 

@RenMacLLC  https://redfin.com/news/sellers-vs-buyers-price-impact/

XTOD: On June 2, the #GDPNow model nowcast of real GDP growth in Q2 2025 is 4.6%: https://bit.ly/32EYojR. #ATLFedResearch Download our EconomyNow app or go to our website for the latest GDPNow nowcast: https://bit.ly/2TPeYLT.

XTOD: this is gold https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GsF5LXQaUAQYKYA?format=jpg&name=900x900

XTOD: 60% of young adults say their lives lack purpose.  Here are 7 questions that can help you find direction: 🧵….4. What’s your sentence? One sentence. That’s it. 

“He helped people find their voice.”   “She made science accessible.”   “They made work better for everyone.”  Distill your life into a sentence—and aim toward it.

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Daily Economic Update: June 2, 2025

A Good Month For Stocks

The S&P gained 6% on the month, ending at 5,911.  While stocks had a great month, at times it felt like the long-end of the treasury curve was the star of the show.  Overall the reality of May was that it was a bit of a mess and it can be somewhat amazing to remember how much we forgot (that sounds like a Yogi-ism).

So What Passed For “News” During May?

1. From Liberation Day to Legal Limbo: Obviously May ended with court related headlines, first a block, then a reinstatement, but mid-May featured the 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs with China and along the way there were plenty of headlines about tariff negotiations (UK, China, EU) or lack thereof.

2. Patient Powell:  We had the May 7 FOMC decision which left us with elevated risks to both sides of the Fed’s dual mandate as markets and yields on the front-end of the curve rose about 20bps on the month.

3. Moody’s U.S. Credit Downgrade (Finally):  After years of playing the will-they/won’t-they game, Moody’s joined S&P and Fitch in downgrading U.S. debt. The market largely shrugged—but it gave us all an excuse to talk about fiscal r-star and bond vigilantes again.

4. AI Mountainhead:  Fitting that we ended a month where Nvidia’s earnings and Google’s Veo 3 reminded us that the AI narrative isn’t slowing down withHBO’s made for TV movie, Mountainhead, which gave us an interesting take on a future filled with AI deep fakes unleashed by models controlled by tech elites with questionable (at best) morals. 

5. Buffett Hands Over The Reigns: The Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting saw Warren Buffett announce that Greg Abel will succeed him as CEO by the end of the year.  Buffett’s emphasis on patience, preparedness, and his belief in America are lasting lessons for a world that lacks the attention to learn them.

Speaking Of Lessons Learned

May gave us the opportunity to encounter a few pieces of wisdom.

1. “Uncertainty is Necessary” – Fisher Black’s Quiet Revolution.  For a blog that frequently highlights that the future is inherently uncertain, that forecasting is unreliable, and admitting “I Don’t Know” if often the most honest and practical answer. In a month filled with tariff uncertainty, we revisited Black’s 1986 paper Noise to explain how markets need uncertainty. Without it, no one would trade. Without disagreement, there’s no liquidity. Noise isn’t a bug—it’s the feature.

2. “Markets Need Virtue, Not Just Valuation” – Lessons from the Vatican.  While markets need trading, we talked about how business may need more virtue.  Drawing from Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus, we heard that capitalism without a moral foundation risks becoming a thinly disguised totalitarianism. Work isn’t just a transaction; it’s a vocation.

3. “Ricardian Equivalence Is Dead—Long Live the American Consumer”  The theory that people save when deficits rise? Not so much. May reminded us that consumers spend now, worry later. Debt is high, rates are high, and yet confidence surged.

4. “Debt is the Hidden Lever in ROE” – DuPont Deconstructed. We broke down DuPont analysis and asked: do investors really know how much leverage is baked into their portfolios? Financial performance looks great until rising rates hit the denominator.

5. “The Real Battle Is Over Narrative Ownership” -  From Kyla Scanlon’s Screwtape-inspired take on spiritual fatigue to our own reflections on market memory and subconscious investing, May reminded us: the economy is shaped by stories—and whose story wins matters.  As Howard Marks’ says: "the first cause [of market euphoria] is extreme brevity of the financial memory.”

What will June have in store for us, your guess is as good as mine.  As always, the most important insight may be timeless: your behavior matters more than your forecast.

Onto June and Jobs

While May started with a 2Y Treasury yield at 3.61% and the 10Y to 4.18%.  It ended with the 2Y up around 4% and the 10Y at 4.40%. The focus on deficits and the status of the One Big Beautiful Bill.  As yields remain in focus, we’ll see if investors turn their attention to the so-called Fed Model popularized by Ed Yardeni to ascertain whether stocks offer sufficient value.

On the week ahead, stateside we’ll hear more about whether and how China is cheating on the tariff pause, tariffs in general and we’ll get some jobs data.  We’ll also hear from some central bankers at the ECB and BoC in case you care.

Today: ISM Mfg, some Fedspeak

Tue: JOLTS, factory orders, more Fedspeak

Wed: ADP, ISM Services, Bank of Canada

Thur: ECB decision, jobless claims 

Fri: Jobs Day in ‘merica

XTODs:

XTOD: 30% or more of the Russian Air Force’s fleet of long-range nuclear-capable strategic bombers were reportedly damaged and/or destroyed during today’s operation by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), in what Russian milbloggers are calling “Russia’s Pearl Harbor”

XTOD: Light is distinctive only insomuch as it (like any massless particle) experiences no time, so all of its velocity vector points in the space directions, and therefore it moves with a purely *spatial* speed of c.   c is merely the conversion factor between space and time

XTOD: The TACO trade may be over! Make way for the BURRITO trade, where Trump Backs Up Rapidly, Regrets It, Then Overreacts!  (h/t Marc!). https://shrubstack.com/p/gag-in-may-and-shrub-away?r=at83k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

XTOD: Ezra Klein: Part of what's happening when you spend seven hours reading a book is you spend seven hours with your mind on a given topic. But the idea that ChatGPT can summarize it for you is nonsense.  The point is that books don't just give you information. They give you a container to think about a narrowly defined scope of ideas.   Downloading information is obviously part of why you read books. But the other part is that books let you ruminate on a topic with a level of depth that's hard to achieve on your own.

XTOD: Maxim: Stay away from people who put money over everything. These people just build themselves expensive prisons.

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Daily Economic Update: May 30, 2025

Matt Levine’s Titled His Column: Tariffs Are Illegal

As you already read, yesterday started with the news that Federal courts blocked Trump’s tariffs. By the afternoon the Trump Administration appealed and the tariffs were reinstated. It seems likely this will end up in front of the Supreme Court, but as some analysts have pointed out, there are other avenues the administration can use to impose tariffs, though each seem to have some limitations. In the meantime some reports continue to state that the trade negotiations between some countries and the U.S. continue.

To state the obvious, the future of tariffs is uncertain and if there’s one thing markets hate, it’s uncertainty.

But What If You Need Uncertainty?

I’m sure you know that Fisher Black is famous for his work on option pricing and the famous Black-Scholes (and later Merton) model.  And you might remember my post where I mentioned the DIKW theory of knowledge, where the “I” stands for “information”, or data made useful, where we can make useful inferences.  So what does this have to do with Fisher Black, well back in 1986 in a paper titled Noise he made the point that uncertainty is a necessary condition of financial markets. 

Black defined information in markets as data that allows us to estimate true value and everything else as noise, simply data that appears informative, but really adds nothing to our ability to estimate true value. 

He argues that absent this uncertainty, in the form of noise, is essential because without it “there will be very little trading” in individual assets. Further providing, “Noise trading is trading on noise as if it were information. People who trade on noise are willing to trade even though from an objective point of view they would be better off not trading. Perhaps they think the noise they are trading on is information. Or perhaps they just like to trade. With a lot of noise traders in the market, it now pays for those with information to trade. It even pays for people to seek out costly information which they will then trade on.”

So the next time you hear someone complain about how much uncertainty topic XYZ creates, just remember without that uncertainty there would be no liquidity and markets lose meaning.

“Differences in opinion make a market” or as Dune put it: “to know the future absolutely! All of it! What fortunes could be made — and lost on such absolute knowledge, eh?” but “what a hellish gift that’d be. What utter boredom! Every living instant he’d be replaying what he knew absolutely … Ignorance has its advantages.”

Perhaps The Real Uncertainty Is The Limit Of Central Power

What do tariffs and “the whiskey rebellion" have in common, almost everything or maybe nothing.

Tariffs today and the whiskey tax of the 1790s may seem worlds apart, but they share a common thread: a federal government, burdened by debt, reaching for revenue in pursuit of what it defines as national interest.  Today, that national interest is domestic manufacturing and national security, specifically strategic sectors like steel and semiconductors. In the 1790s, the interest was the westward expansion and asserting control over the Northwest Territory. Today, the tariff actions imposed by the executive branch, which supposedly will be paid for by exporting countries, but in reality are paid by the importer (though who bears the actual tax incidence is debatable), are the actions that are justified in supporting the national interest.  Back then it was a Congress enacted tax on whiskey distillers, part of a plan to fund the war debt and build federal legitimacy in the west.  Both tariffs and the whiskey tax appeared to unevenly economically squeeze some groups more than others: back then western PA whiskey distillers bear a heavier burden than eastern counterparts, today it’s small and medium sized businesses feeling the tariff brunt.  

The policies of today and of yester-year were viewed by some as being too top-down, and solutions that ignored economic realities. Thankfully today’s resistance is judicial and procedural, as contrasted by those of the 1790s were resisted with rifles. The overarching parallel is one as old as this republic, which is one of the limitations of central power.  Whether it has been frontier stills or modern ports and factories, American history is filled with moments where citizens have questioned the reach of central power.  The song remains the same, who decides, who pays, and who pushes back.

Speaking Of Pushing Back On Central Power

Trump invited Powell to the White House to tell him to lower rates.  Powell reiterated (at least through the Fed statement) that the Fed will “make decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis.”   For all the media hype around Trump and Powell’s relationship, it’s really not a new political story.  Paul Volcker has written about pressure from politicians on himself during his tenure in his memoir.  Nevertheless, I’ve written about this tension a few times and perhaps my favorite lens to view this falls under the concept of “fiscal r-star” which you can read about in this post from back in January.

Maybe We Need Information - But All We Get Is Data
In data, we got a slight improvement in GDP in the second estimate with 1Q estimated to be -0.2% vs. the previous estimate of -0.3%, but consumption was revised down. With all the “noise” and speculation of whether there was tariff front-loading, etc. in 1Q, it’s hard to know what to make of these estimates.  Over in jobless claim land, claims remained low.

And the treasury was able to sell the 7Y note at 4.194%, printing 2.3bps through where WI was trading with again signs of strong foreign demand.

We ended the day with the S&P 500 up slightly to 5,912.  The 2Y yield moved down to 3.95% and the 10Y yield down to 4.42%.

PCE hits this morning. Let’s see what new uncertainty it can gift us.

XTODs:

XTOD: "I encourage you to continue pushing the boundaries of our knowledge, to ask the difficult questions, & to pursue the answers with rigor & dedication. Your efforts today will shape the policies of tomorrow, influencing the economic well-being of millions." https://federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/kugler20250529a.htm

XTOD: If $WFC Asset Cap gets lifted that’s huge capacity to absorb Treasuries & Agencies… already they have started to buy CLO AAAs…

XTOD: The stock market isn't where you get rich. You get rich developing skills & using those skills to provide goods & services to other people for income which allows you to save. 

The stock market is where you allocate some of that savings to help protect & plan for future spending.   Index funds are a wonderful stock market savings vehicle as they're low cost, diversified and will likely beat 80%+ of higher fee strategies.

XTOD: When there is a lack of clarity, people waste time and energy on the trivial many.  When they have sufficient levels of clarity, they are capable of greater breakthroughs and innovations – greater than people even realise they ought to have – in those areas that are truly vital.

XTOD: Investor Rick Buhrman on the kindness of mastering your craft:

INTERVIEWER: What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?​

BUHRMAN: ... our oldest son, Theo, who just turned seven, spent the first six months of his life in several NICUs. He was eventually helicoptered to Indianapolis at Riley Hospital for Children. And while we were living in that NICU for almost a half a year we saw a lot of kids who passed away. Most of those kids were not as sick as Theo was.

I don’t know exactly why Theo survived, but I know that a major part of how he survived was because for several decades leading up to that moment, numerous nurses, nurse practitioners, respiratory therapists, doctors, surgeons had committed themselves wholeheartedly to mastering their craft. I can give you tons and tons of examples of these people. And I know that in the moment, it wasn’t necessarily viewed as kindness.

But maybe in some sense, the kindest thing that all of us can do is to pursue something radically that in some way is in service to others, because you just don't know how it's going to change the trajectory of human life. And so for all of those medical practitioners, none of whom I'm sure are listening to this, I owe everything to, because they gave me the gift of being Theo's dad.

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