In-case-you-missed-it Monday: the real stories that mattered in the financial papers this week.
UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
The biggest economic piece of news last week, was the unemployment rate, that ticked up higher than expected to 4.1%.
The downturn in hours worked cemented the perception that this was a “soft” result.
Now, the Labour Force Survey data is notoriously choppy, and you should never read too much into one month’s results, but someone forgot to tell the bond markets. After bond yields ticked up on the hotter-than-expected US inflation data, they dropped again on the unemployment numbers. They had pushed their expectations of the first rate cut out to December on the CPI data, and pulled it back to September on the jobs data.
This tells us there’s a lack of confidence in markets about where we’re actually headed. Things will be choppy for a while.
META MEA CULPA
Meta (nee Facebook) posted their results, and they were a cracker. Their share price boomed, adding the entire market cap of Shell Oil to their own market cap in a single day.
In the past year, they’ve added 3 Netflix worths. Just crazy.
But not everyone is loving it. Mark Zuckerberg had to front Congress to explain why his product was killing people. The research increasingly suggests that social media has a range of negative psychological and health impacts on people, especially young people:
How much of this is Meta’s fault? How much is Apples? How much is Tik Toks? There’s no real way to know, but perhaps we should be more concerned than we are.
SUPPLY CHAINS FLOWING
The Goldman Sachs Supply Chain Bottleneck Index has ticked up a little recently with disruptions in the Red Sea, but it’s nothing to worry about yet.
WAR SHIPS AHOY!
The Economist Magazine did a piece on the relative size of the worlds Naval Fleets. It’s the US and China going neck and neck at the moment.
But looking forward, China is set to overtake the US by a considerable amount.
Helps explain where all the Aussie iron ore and steel is going. (That should be fine.)
And that’s (pretty much) everything worth knowing this week.
JG.