Read the highlights of this week’s commentary from Helios:
Initial jobless claims are starting to slowly tick up from their historic lows, rising for the third week in a row to 251K, up from 197K and 166K in mid-March, which was the second lowest reading on record.
Leading Economic Index fell 0.8% in June, below expectations, with consumer expectations being the largest detractor within the index, while interest rate spreads were the largest positive contributor.
There are a few big decisions and releases coming up. The Fed is meeting on July 26th and 27th, and the second quarter GDP report comes out the next day on the 28th. As of Friday at noon eastern, the market expects an 81% probability for the Fed to hike by 75 basis points and a 19% probability for a 100 basis point hike (which is down considerably from the week prior), and the latest economist survey by Bloomberg has the median GDP expectation of a 2.2% annualized rate of growth.
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