First Trust Global Portfolios Limited
Web: www.ftglobalportfolios.com/
Phone: +44 (0)203 195 7121
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
15.10.2019 16:49 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Trade Clouds Parting Trade disputes have been an ongoing soap opera since President Trump took office. From steel tariffs to trade skirmishes with China, Japan, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and the European Union, among others, it’s been hard to keep track! But over the past few months we think a trend toward settlement of these disputes has emerged. Congress must still act on the new version...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
14.10.2019 12:57 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Labor Market Continues to Roar In spite of all the fear-mongering about a recession, Friday’s employment report clearly showed we are not in an economic downturn. The best news in the report was that the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, the lowest most Americans have seen in their lifetimes. Even better, the drop in joblessness was broad-based. The Hispanic unemployment rate fell to 3.9%, while...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
03.10.2019 16:45 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Repo Turmoil In Ronald Reagan’s famous A Time For Choosing speech in 1964, he said “…the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.” We were reminded of this recently after pundits freaked out when the New York Federal Reserve injected reserves into the banking system to keep some short-term rates from rising. A few things to keep in mind: 1) The jump in the overnight repo and federal...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
24.09.2019 17:37 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Fear the Spending, Not the Debt Never underestimate the ability of politicians to mess up a good thing. They’re certainly trying in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, many people are concerned about the wrong thing. Nice even numbers fascinate people, and through the first eleven months of this fiscal year (October 2018 through August 2019), the U.S. budget deficit was over $1 trillion ($1.067...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
17.09.2019 14:02 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: We’re All Keynesians Now “We are all Keynesians now,” is a phrase that caught on in the late 1960s and early 1970s, variously attributed to Milton Friedman and President Richard Nixon. Uncle Milty was commenting on the general political/economic environment, not saying he was a Keynesian. Richard Nixon, on the other hand, actually said “I am now a Keynesian.” We bring this up because it’s...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
10.09.2019 17:22 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Rorschach Economics We’ve all heard of the Rorschach test - you know, the one where you look at an ink blot and say what you see. The theory is that it’s a tunnel into someone’s subconscious thoughts or desires. If you’re obsessed with hockey you might look at an ink splotch and see hockey sticks, or pucks, a Stanley Cup, or even Bobby Orr; if someone is obsessed with outer space, she could look at...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
04.09.2019 13:38 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Labor Days Labor Day is probably the best time to take stock of the American worker and, for them, it’s rarely been better. The unemployment rate is near the lowest level since the 1960s, job growth remains robust, and wage growth is in a general accelerating trend. The unemployment rate was 3.6% in April and May and 3.7% in June and July, and, we’re guessing, August, as well. The last time...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
06.08.2019 13:25 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The Flailing Fed The Fed is flailing. For the past several years, under the leadership of both Jerome Powell and, before that, Janet Yellen, the Fed claimed it was “data dependent.” But the decision last week to reduce short-term rates by 25 basis points tore that narrative to shreds. At the prior Federal Reserve meeting in mid-June, a slender majority of Fed policymakers projected no rate cuts...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
23.07.2019 16:37 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Temporary Tepid Growth for Q2 This Friday, the government will release its initial estimate of real GDP growth in the second quarter, and the headline is likely to look soft. At present, we’re projecting an initial report of growth at a 1.8% annual rate. If our projection holds true, we’re sure pessimistic analysts and investors will latch onto the slowdown from the 3.1% growth rate for the...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
16.07.2019 16:09 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Until recently, Fed Chair, Jerome Powell sounded a consistent theme: the Fed is data dependent and will stay that way, unswayed by noise or pressure from politicians. When the FOMC released its rate decision last month, it got as dovish as it could without actually cutting short-term rates. It downgraded its assessment of economic growth from “solid” to “moderate” while noting that “market-based...
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Lifting Our Target for Stock Prices
09.07.2019 13:21 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The S&P 500 is up 27% from its Christmas Eve low, and 19.3% this calendar year through the close on Friday – not including dividends. Last December, our forecast for 2019 was 3,100. We’re just 3.7% away. As a result, and in combination with our continued bullishness, we are raising our year-end 2019 S&P 500 target to 3,250 from 3,100, with the Dow Jones Industrials Average now estimated to finish...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
25.06.2019 12:30 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: This Crazy Rate Cut The narrative that the U.S. economy is in trouble – some say teetering on the edge of recession - has become so powerful and persuasive that few investors give it a second thought. So of course, they believe, the Fed should cut interest rates. We haven’t seen anything like it since the Fed was hiking rates in the deflationary late- ‘90s. Those rate hikes, which were totally...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
18.06.2019 14:26 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: A few key economic reports have taken a turn for the better, boosting expected real GDP growth in the second quarter and pointing to an upward revision to first quarter growth. Retail sales grew 0.5% in May, very close to consensus expectations, and were revised up substantially for prior months. Pairing this data with other recent reports, it now looks like real GDP in Q1 will be revised up to a...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
11.06.2019 15:41 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: No Need for Rate Cuts At the Friday close the market consensus was that the Federal Reserve would cut short-term interest rates by 50 - 75 basis points in 2019, with another 25 basis point cut in 2020. We think this is nuts. The US economy doesn’t need rate cuts. At present, we are projecting that real GDP is growing at about a 1.5% pace in the second quarter. That’s slower than the recent trend...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
04.06.2019 16:53 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The Plow Horse Returns? We haven’t been worried about a trade conflict with China, which has a long track record of pirating intellectual property and is a potential military rival in the (not too distant) future. The US has enormous leverage with China, given our trade deficit with the country and the ability of firms to shift supply chains toward alternatives, like Vietnam, Mexico, and India. ...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
29.05.2019 15:22 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Foreign Slowness Not an Obstacle One consistent theme we’ve heard lately among pessimistic analysts and investors is that slower growth abroad is a headwind for economic growth in the US. Softness in Europe or China, they say, bodes poorly for the continuation of US expansion. The standard theory, the conventional wisdom, is that slower growth abroad means slower growth in US exports. ...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
21.05.2019 16:42 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Don’t Count on a Rate Cut At the close of activity on Friday the futures market in federal funds was projecting a 75% chance of at least one rate cut this year. From now through the end of 2020, the market is projecting two rate cuts. We thought markets stopped believing in Santa Claus a long time ago, but unfortunately it doesn’t appear so. The US economy is nowhere even close to needing one...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
24.07.2018 14:44 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Yield Curve Inversion (16 July 2018) The yield spread between the 2-year and 10-year Treasury Note has narrowed to 25 basis points, its smallest spread since 2007. This has many investors worried the narrowing spread will lead to an inversion of the yield curve (when short-term rates exceed long-term rates) – which throughout history has often occurred prior to a recession. In reality, an inverted...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
24.07.2018 14:42 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Job Market: From Strength to Strength (09 July 2018) The US labor market is going from strength to strength. Like with corporate earnings, June jobs data beat consensus estimates - up 213,000 - pushing the average monthly gain for the past year to 198,000 per month. Meanwhile the unemployment rate jumped from 3.8% to 4.0%. Why? Because the civilian labor force grew by 601,000. We hate blowing...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
24.07.2018 14:41 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Economy Surges in Q2 (23 July 2018) Economic growth surged in the second quarter this year. The only question is, by how much? Predicting this Friday’s GDP report is trickier than usual. First, it’s the initial report for the quarter. Second, we have to wait until Thursday for key data on exports and imports, which is particularly important because the trade sector looks to have had an unusually...
