Reports this week:
- Nonfarm Payrolls: headline +236k [+0.15%] m/m; avg hourly earnings +0.3% m/m. Expansionary. Also true for my payrolls “recession detector” sub-index: “working part time/slack work” (LNS12032195): +33k, which is still at expansionary levels.
- ISM Manufacturing: 46.3 (expected 47.5); contractionary.
- ISM Services: 51.2 (expected 54.4); weakly expansionary.
- Factory Orders: -0.7% m/m (expected -0.4%); contractionary.
- Fed Balance Sheet: -73.5b w/w (-0.84%)
The indicators are starting to weaken. In addition to these, Total Bank Credit (TOTBKCR) fell by $176 billion (-1.01%) w/w, which is a huge drop in a short period of time. When bank credit is flat, or doesn’t expand much, that’s contractionary. When it actually moves lower – that’s deflationary. And the Fed is once again letting its balance sheet run off, which is also contractionary.
What will Powell see? He’ll see rising services inflation. Because – Disability. This month saw an increase in “CLF 16-64 With a Disability” (Civilian Labor Force = working, or looking for work) by +86k, or 1.3% m/m. Women got hit much harder by disability than men: +16k m/m for men (+0.49%) and +70k m/m for women (+2.16%). The percentage is not calculated vs the entire workforce – just the increase in the size of the “With a Disability” group. Pharma products: Safe & Effective.
This was a shortened trading week due to the Good Friday holiday.
For the week, gold rose 40.40 [+2.04%] to 2017.40, closing the week above the 2000 level for the first time since 2020. You can see from the COT (commercial shorts) report below that the banksters don’t seem to want to go short right now – for whatever reason. My eyeball says those banksters are shy about 80k GC contracts, and the reluctance started roughly in late November 2022. Note that while the buck fell, gold/Euros climbed 1.46% on the week – gold’s move above 2000 was not just a currency effect.
Silver rose 0.94 (+3.88%) to 25.09, breaking out to a new 11-month high. I’ve marked up this chart a bit, since the “shortage” of silver shorts is substantially more dramatic than for gold, as it was last week. The bankster reluctance to short silver started roughly in December 2022.
by sagerxx 
