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Accepter Déclin
Par  Eric Lascelles 11 juin 2024

Les nouvelles économiques abondent et notre économiste en chef fait le point dans une nouvelle vidéo du #MacroMémo. Écoutez la présentation d’Eric Lascelles sur les décisions des banques centrales relatives aux taux d’intérêt, notamment celles qu’ont récemment prises la Banque centrale européenne et la Banque du Canada, et l’intervention prochaine de la Réserve fédérale américaine. Il se penche également sur les sujets suivants :

  • La sensibilité des consommateurs à l’augmentation des prix et la façon dont ils font front contre les hausses

  • Les dernières données sur l’inflation, le marché du travail, les demandes de prestations de chômage, et autres

  • Les signes de récession laissant entrevoir un atterrissage en douceur

Enfin, M. Lascelles aborde les élections américaines de cet automne et examine brièvement le marché de l’or.

Durée : 15 minutes, 12 secondes

Transcription

(en anglais seulement)

Hello and welcome to our latest video #MacroMemo. As always, there's quite a lot to share in the economic space.

  • We’re going to start with a discussion on the sensitivity of consumers and households to rising prices. It was very low and it's gone higher and there are all sorts of implications that come from that.
  • We'll talk a little bit about central banks and rate cuts, including the Bank of Canada recently. So that journey has now begun.
  • We'll spend a moment just in the data space talking about some recent prominent indicators, including U.S. payrolls. We'll also spend a moment previewing the next U.S. inflation report so there's a fair chance you're watching this after it came out. So I'll just talk around some of the key issues that we're looking at, at least in that space.
  • We’ll nod our head toward the U.S. election, which is now less than five months away.
  • And we will spend a moment as well on gold prices, which are near all-time highs right now. That merits some discussion.

So that's the plan.

Consumer price sensitivity: Let's start with a look at the sensitivity of consumers to rising prices. This was very low for a period of time. We had inflation that was skyrocketing in 2021 and 2022. Yet consumers very easily lapped up all of the sorts of products that were made available to them.

So consumer price sensitivity was unusually low when people were swimming in cash and these sorts of things. We believe it is now rising importantly, and we can observe this in a few ways.

One way, very simplistically, is just that consumer spending and retail sales growth has slowed, so people are spending more cautiously in the U.S. Much of this has a U.S. frame, though I think it is a fair assessment almost everywhere. The U.S. Beige Book has a comment that contacts in most districts noted consumers pushing back against additional price increases. So this is being very much observed in a widespread way to that end. And really it's the flip side of the same coin.

Corporate executives are talking a lot about price sensitivity over the last six months or so in particular. And we do have anecdotes galore as well.

And so consumer-facing companies are cutting prices. This is by no means a complete list whatsoever. This is just a few prominent companies that have caught newspaper headlines. McDonald's and Burger King have announced $5 value meals in the U.S. Target has said it's cutting 5,000 prices. Walmart is cutting 7,000 prices.

Amazon and Aldi, Walgreens and any number of other companies are in a similar position. So this is a behavioral change from companies, right now.

We can see, by the way, some changing behavior in what's called the price micro data. So statistical agencies collect thousands of price points across the economy when they are analyzing inflation and collecting the higher-level inflation data.

They don't publish all of that, but they do do some analysis on it. And it does appear that companies are raising prices less frequently and by smaller amounts when they do raise prices. So there is some deceleration off of the inflation peak on that front as well.

And when businesses are being asked how they decide on setting their prices, they say, “Listen, we're very much influenced by wages and of course, input costs and interest rates and so on.” So plenty of things ultimately influence price setting behavior.

But the number one determinant is demand. It’s whether the economy is hot or not. You can get away with higher prices when it is and you can't when it's not. To the extent the U.S. economy is decelerating somewhat. I should say other economies are in a position of maybe slight excess supply, meaning they're running a hair below their potential.

That's a good argument that businesses will continue to be a bit more cautious with their pricing plans. So there are positive things that come from this.

Of course, it most importantly helps inflation come down. That's critical. It does also, I would argue, endorsed the soft-landing narrative, the idea that inflation is not just easing, but maybe the economy is also slowing a little bit as consumers pull back.

That's a good thing because there was a degree of overheating beforehand.

There are negatives, though. One would just be that consumer caution does reflect a measure of distress, be it from higher rates or from other forces. Consumers aren't feeling super great right now.

Do we think they're ultimately okay? For the most part ‘yes.’ As for investors, we are an asset manager and so we are very much catering to investors. Investors need to be aware that, of course, if businesses are unable to push through price increases and forced to push through price cuts, that could push profit margins lower at the expense of the companies doing that. They're doing it out of necessity, but it’s still not an ideal set-up for those particular companies.

Okay, let's move on from there.

Interest rate cuts: Let's talk about monetary easing and central bank rate cuts. We've already seen a measure of this in recent months and quarters. I've said many times before that emerging market central banks have been cutting rates for a while. The Swiss and the Swedish central banks in the developed world space have been cutting now for a few months.

We just got two fairly major players added to that list in the last week as I record this. One would be the European Central Bank cut its policy rate by a quarter percentage point. The other is the Bank of Canada cut its rate by a similar quarter of a percentage point. And so this process begins and we can talk about probably more rate cuts coming from these entities over the coming months and quarters.

Usually when central banks start moving, they keep moving for a period of time. And we certainly believe that rates are restrictive right now. So it would make sense that they become less restrictive over time as inflation settles and as the economy has underperformed a little bit.

I will say within that, to the extent there was a surprise – to my eye, at least – it was on the Bank of Canada side, which is the Bank of Canada left open the window, if not the door, to a July rate cut as well.

The thinking going into this had been, well, maybe the Bank of Canada cuts in June, maybe it cuts in July. But if it cuts in June, it won't do July. If it does July, it won't do June. You'll get one rate cut out of those two meetings and they'll move slowly from there. As it stands right now, of course, we did get the June rate cut and the market is actually pricing in a greater than 60% chance of a July rate cut as well, based on the Bank of Canada's signaling.

So it's possible we get more intensive easing than previously imagined.

I have to confess, I'm a little bit skeptical. I would still put my own personal odds below a 50% probability for a Bank of Canada cut in July. Other central banks are not going at every meeting. They're going every few meetings. It's slow going. The Fed in the U.S. hasn't even started yet.

So I would say maybe September makes more sense to me. But July is in play very clearly in the market, actually thinks it's pretty likely. So maybe Canadian rates get to come down a little bit faster.

I will just mention the U.S. Federal Reserve goes this week – in fact tomorrow as I'm recording this, so maybe it's already yesterday when you're watching this – but I'll just say it looks extremely unlikely that the Fed will cut rates at this opportunity.

The bigger question is just the extent to which it gives an altered projection for how many rate cuts it thinks it might deliver over the remainder of the year. There's a pretty good chance that actually gets downgraded from two cuts, which was the plan as of a quarter ago when they last released their dot plots to maybe to maybe one cut formerly planned this go round.

Economic data: Let's pivot over to some other economic data. I'll just mention U.S. payrolls, the big job number that gets looked at very closely. This was an above consensus outcome as 272,000 jobs were created. The expectation had been 180,000. So a fair size outperformance. We had predicted that. That's me patting myself on the back. It doesn't always happen, but that's the case this go round. And in general it was a pretty good-looking report.

Hours worked were also up and wage growth held together fairly well and so on. Certainly you could poke holes. The household survey was weaker, the hiring at the sector level was a bit less economically sensitive than you might like. But in general the labor market is holding together.

I would say in general the labor market is also maybe softening a bit and we see job openings falling in a healthy way, but nevertheless signaling less heat. We see jobless claims may be starting to edge a little bit higher.

We can see a number of trends of that nature taking place and maybe culminating in the observation that the U.S. unemployment rate is now up to 4.0%. It spent a long, long time in the threes, which was exceedingly low. It's now up to 4%.

But one thing I'll say is that we are close to triggering what's called the Sahm Rule, this idea that historically any time the U.S. trend unemployment rate has gone up by a half percentage point, there's been a recession. It's kept going higher.

Essentially, I would say that we are probably going to trigger the Sahm Rule within the next few months. I'd be surprised if we didn't just based on this gradually rising unemployment rate.

I will say, even though historically it has been a very strong signal, I'm not convinced it is a sure-fire recession predictor. There's nothing mechanical about a slightly higher unemployment rate that guarantees a recession.

That rule does not work at all in other countries. So, again, there's nothing automatic about this.

We've seen a lot of recession rules already broken this cycle. Lending standards tightened and there wasn't a recession. Global trade fell, there wasn't a recession. Profit margins fell and there wasn't a recession. We even broke below what's called the stall speed – which historically would predict a recession – and we didn't get a recession.

Not to say recession risk is zero here, and we might get tongues wagging about this, the Sahm Rule being broken or being triggered, rather, in the next few months. But I will say we're still comfortable thinking a soft landing is more likely than a hard landing at this point in time.

And indeed supporting that we had seen some worrying data from the ISM services index not long ago and that's since rebounded very nicely, bounced back above the critical 50 threshold. So the U.S. economy actually tracking about 3% growth for the second quarter, which is just fine.

Inflation: A quick word on the inflation side of things. The May inflation data is set to be imminently released, at least as I record this.

I guess the back story is one in which we had some hot inflation numbers at the start of 2024, creating some real angst and pushing back rate cut expectations. The April data got a little better. The hope is the May data gets a little better again. I think that's pretty likely at this juncture.

Headline inflation should be actually outright soft, given falling gas prices. Core inflation is likely in the realm of 0.3% increase, which is better than it was a few months ago, though still not where it needs to be.

It should add to the confidence that inflation is coming down. But not maybe quite as profoundly as you would ideally like.

Maybe the way to frame this is the consensus expectation is pretty good. I always like to look for angles and like to look for ways that we should be off-consensus. Consensus seems about right, right now.

I will say, though, the consensus is very strong. So core inflation is the key here. Fifty-two out of 62 analysts are calling for 0.3% core inflation print. I think that's the best guess. But I would say there is a real chance at something else.

If we were to get a 0.4%, that would be pretty disastrous to the extent of really undermining and questioning whether inflation is improving at all. If we were to get a 0.2%, conversely, it would be pretty fantastic. People would probably pull forward rate cut expectations and feel an awful lot better about the inflation outlook.

Maybe the most useful thing is to say this is a really important release and it's going to help to set the tone for central banks and for others going forward. So let's watch it very carefully.

Two other quick topics for me:

U.S. fall election: Just very briefly, the U.S. election now is fewer than five months away. We had mentioned about a month, a month and a half ago, that Biden had seemingly caught up to Trump and was roughly equal in the polls. In the betting markets, Trump was a little ahead.

Now, all of the metrics we look at say Trump has a slight lead. Still close, still could go either way, but with Trump as the slight favorite. So be aware of that.

We've had a number of other interesting developments in that space over the last couple of months. One would be Trump was criminally convicted of a crime. Does that prevent him from contesting the election? Does that prevent him from holding office? No and no.

As far as we can tell, in fact, appeals will likely push this case beyond the realm of the election and indeed, even a president criminally convicted of something is theoretically able to sit and serve their terms. I don't think that's going to change the story. The three other criminal cases against him are very unlikely to be resolved before the election is done as well.

On the Biden side, he did issue an executive order tightening up illegal immigration. That's likely to be reversed by courts. But it's a signal that he's tough on immigration, much as Trump is for the election and for that race.

Similarly, Biden applied some tariffs to Chinese green technologies recently. That's continuing a trend which is both Biden and Trump have been anti-China to a degree. You could say pro-tariff and pro-buy-American. These green taxes, of course, are very strategic. The U.S. is hoping to build world-beating technologies domestically as well.

Obviously, tariffs are not great from a growth or an inflation perspective and so worth keeping in mind. But I think in general we can expect further frictions with China regardless of who's elected coming out of this election.

The last fiscal thought is just that we already know that neither candidate cares a whole lot about balanced budgets and no one's really talked up that or even the broader fiscal situation. So both seem keen to spend if Congress will allow them coming out of this election.

I will say that as we track the size of the U.S. deficit this year, it's tracking very similar to last year. And so not to say that's good. It's a huge deficit. But it does mean that the deficit isn't getting larger. Equally, it means that there isn't a net economic boost on the fiscal side, which there had been last year. So it makes sense the U.S. economy is slowing a bit.

Gold prices: My last thought, at the risk of going far too long, is gold prices. Gold has hit a record level in the last month of US$2,450 a Troy ounce. It's sort of a funny development on the surface because inflation is coming down, not rising, because risk inversion is fairly moderate and indeed risk assets are rising.

So it's not obvious that people are fleeing for the hills. Interest rates are fairly high, which normally hurts gold because gold doesn't pay a coupon. It's less relatively attractive. But gold just set a record.

So it seems like there are some other maybe smaller things at work. But one big thing worth mentioning and that's just that central banks are buying a lot of gold. The U.S. dollar was weaponized against Russia some time ago. The U.S. dollar is declining a little bit in its reserve currency status, so a lot of central banks are looking for a different way of diversifying their reserve assets and they have settled on gold. We've seen over a thousand tonnes of gold per year sold to central banks over each of the last two years.

So that is a strong source of demand for gold and others are piling onto that. It could continue to enjoy support for some time.

I would say there's less obviously scope for increases in gold from inflation, less obviously scope for increases in gold from risk aversion. I would warn that the real return on gold should be expected to be something like 0% over the long run, which is not a hugely attractive return.

But gold has done well and has some momentum and perhaps could continue to do well if the central banks keep buying.

All right, well, I'm on too long, but thanks for sticking with me. Hope you found that interesting. And please tune in again next time.

Pour en savoir plus, consultez le #MacroMemo

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