ANDIKA BULLETin 16 MAY 2024

Tl;dr - Nothing good - all bad... and new record highs for US stocks.

SuperCore CPI hotter than expected (but headline and core CPI in-line/small miss), Retail sales way uglier than expected (but gas station spending surged), homebuilder sentiment slumped, and Empire Fed Manufacturing ugly...

So after a fourth straight month of hotter than expected PPI, analysts' expectations for CPI were tightly ranged around 0.3-0.4% MoM and printed +0.3% MoM (slightly below the 0.4% expected). The YoY headline CPI fell to +3.4% as expected from +3.5% prior.

And the main stream media won't tell you this - that consumer prices have not fallen in a single month since President Biden's term began (July 2022 was the closest with 'unchanged'), which leaves overall prices up over 19.5% since Bidenomics was unleashed (compares with +8% during Trump's term). And prices have never been more expensive.

That is an average of 5.5% per annum (more than triple the 1.9% average per annum rise in price during President Trump's term).

The US market doesn't care about growth - it's high on rate-cut expectations especially after the 'cool' CPI (two cuts fully priced in for 2024 and three more cuts - at least - in 2025).

And that lifted stonks across the board with Nasdaq leading the way to new record highs (Dow & S&P first new record close since March)

Meanwhile the VIX crashed down to 12 handle, yields across the board were down and the USD was down (Aussie up nearly to USD67c)

Gold, Bitcoin all surged with Bitcoin having its best day since MAR2023!!

Happy Thursday!

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