First Trust Global Portfolios Limited
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25.08.2020 16:56 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Biden’s Tax Hike Agenda Election Day is eleven weeks from tomorrow. In political time, this is an eternity. However, with the White House, about one-third of the Senate, and the entire House of Representatives on the ballot, this election is significant. Particularly because the two presidential candidates have such stark differences in policy perspectives, especially with respect to taxes. ...
25.08.2020 16:55 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: A Healing Economy It’s going to take years for the US economy to fully heal from the economic disaster brought about by COVID-19 and the government-mandated shutdowns which continue to limit economic activity across the country. When we talk about a full recovery, we don’t simply mean getting real GDP back where it was in late 2019; a full recovery comes when the unemployment rate gets back below...
04.08.2020 10:40 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Don’t Play GDP Politics These days, pretty much everything is hyper-political, including death rates from disease, wearing masks, opening schools, whether some demonstrations are “mostly peaceful” or “violent,” and now GDP. Late last week, plenty of headlines blared that real GDP declined 32.9% in the second quarter, suggesting that our country’s output of goods and services was roughly 1/3 lower...
28.07.2020 12:47 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Thursday’s initial report on real GDP growth in the second quarter is going to break records, and not in a good way. Right now, it looks like the US economy shrank at a 35% annual rate in Q2. To put that in perspective, the worst quarter we’ve ever had since the military wind-down immediately following World War II was -10% in the first quarter of 1958, when, not by coincidence, the US was hit by...
22.07.2020 11:51 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” It’s been attributed to many different people, Milton Friedman and Robert Heinlein, among others. Regardless of who said it, we think it’s one of the most basic economic truths. A lunch has to come from somewhere, and once it is consumed, it’s not available for someone else to consume. ‘Another way to say it, someone...
13.07.2020 18:57 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Holding Colleges Accountable It’s time to think about something other than COVID, statues, the election, and defunding the police. How about higher education? Specifically, student loans and grants. Just like the bipartisan efforts to making housing more affordable, these programs were well-intentioned. But, also like the housing market, they have led to serious problems. The US has about $1.5...
07.07.2020 10:45 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The Economy and The Virus Not since the 1960s and 70s has the United States experienced social upheaval like it is experiencing today. We have protests (both peaceful and otherwise), and a massively divided political landscape. On top of that, we have a virus that is spreading across the country, creating fear and an acceptance of economic shutdowns. Originally, the scientists said we needed 15...
07.07.2020 10:45 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Not Locking Down A resurgence of new Coronavirus cases around the country has created uncertainty for investors. Stock markets fell last week, not because of the virus, but because investors fear another round of economy-killing, government-mandated lockdowns. We don’t expect that to happen, but when the government is involved, risks are definitely higher. After the peak in early April, the...
07.07.2020 10:44 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Saving and the Shutdown Turning off the global economic light-switch, and then turning it partially back on, has sent shockwaves through economic data that, while anticipated, have been jaw-dropping in both directions. For example, US retail sales plunged a combined 21.8% in March and April, before rising 17.7% in May. Manufacturing production fell 20.0% in March and April, before gaining 3.8% in...
07.07.2020 10:43 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The Fed is Committed to Low Rates The one key takeaway from last week’s Fed meeting is that monetary policymakers are set to keep short-term interest rates near zero for as far as the eye can see. Not forever, but at least until 2023. Keep this in mind in the week ahead, as we get more reports confirming the economic recovery started back in May. The Federal Reserve conveyed that commitment in a...
07.07.2020 10:42 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The Recession is Over The recession that started in March is the sharpest downturn since the Great Depression. As it turns out, it was also the shortest. Friday’s employment report should leave little doubt that the US economy has already hit bottom and is starting to recover. Every economist brave enough to make a public forecast thought nonfarm payrolls would drop in May and the unemployment...
07.07.2020 10:42 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: More Green Shoots A full recovery from the COVID-19/Shutdown Crisis is going to take a long time. We don’t anticipate reaching a new peak for real GDP until the end of 2021; we don’t anticipate a 4% unemployment rate until 2024. However, there is a growing amount of evidence that the economy may have hit bottom in May. It’s important to be cautious; the evidence for having hit bottom already is...
27.05.2020 17:47 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Signs of Economic Life This year’s experiment with government-imposed lockdowns has been a fiasco. We should have been focused on sealing-off nursing homes and limiting mass indoor events, while the vast majority of businesses that were shutdown could have kept operating, with natural social distancing. Now, as most people (those that are not elderly or immuno-compromised) realize their health...
19.05.2020 14:20 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: How Are We Going To Pay For All This? The largest federal budget deficit since World War II came back in 2009, as slower growth and increased government spending during the subprime-mortgage financial panic pushed the deficit to 9.8% of GDP. This year’s the budget deficit will, quite simply, blow that record out of the water. The Congressional Budget Office recently totaled up all the...
05.05.2020 17:27 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Light at the End of the Tunnel When the employment report for April is released this Friday, the economic damage from the deepest of the Coronavirus shutdowns will become clear. We estimate that nonfarm payrolls will be down roughly 22 million versus March, and the unemployment rate will skyrocket to around 17.0%, the highest reading since at least 1948. To put that in perspective, during the...
05.05.2020 17:27 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: GDP: Bad, And Getting Worse Before the Coronavirus, the US economy was cruising for what looked like 3% annualized growth in real GDP in the first quarter. But the effects of both natural social distancing and government-mandated lockdowns crushed economic growth in March. As a result, we now think real GDP contracted at a 3.7% annual rate in Q1, led by a massive drop in inventories as well as...
05.05.2020 17:27 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: With each passing week, the economic damage wrought by the Coronavirus and the resulting shutdowns grows larger. It’s not just businesses, both small to large, feeling the pain. Educational institutions, hospitals, churches, not-for-profits, and state and local governments are all finding it hard to remain financially viable. The US has essentially turned off broad swaths of the private sector – the...
14.04.2020 17:18 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Job Destruction Normally, we’re not big fans of enhanced unemployment benefits. But the current severe economic contraction brought about by the Coronavirus and the government-mandated shutdowns of businesses meant to stop the disease is a completely different animal from a normal recession. It’s not just that people are staying away from certain economic activities because of the virus: the...
07.04.2020 16:31 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Do the Least Harm Doctors think differently than economists. They put patients with a potential for brain damage in an artificial coma to stop swelling, and when it stops, they bring them out. This fits with the Hippocratic Oath all doctors take, which states “First, do no harm.” The idea is to “limit” damage and then “restart” a more normal body with fewer problems. The economy doesn’t work...
31.03.2020 17:38 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The Coronavirus Threat Total deaths in the US from COVID19 look like they’ll hit at least 3,000 by the end of March. A potentially brutal April lies ahead. In the meantime, the measures taken to limit deaths have temporarily tanked the US economy. Initial claims for jobless benefits soared to 3.283 million per week, easily the highest ever. The prior record was 695,000 in October 1982; the...