On July 12, 2019, the soybean futures contract (CBOT) for July 2019 expires (first delivery on 7/16). On July 12, 2018, the closing price was 885.75 (data from ino.com here). What’s your guess on what the expiration price will be?
Recession Watch, July 2019
With the release of nonfarm payroll employment (NFP) numbers today, we have a new set of readings on indicators emphasized by the NBER BCDC (used in dating the end of the 2001 recession), since my last post on recession indicators. While NFP continues to trend upwards, industrial production, personal income excluding current transfers, manufacturing and trade industry sales are all below recent peaks. Monthly GDP has risen to match the last peak in January 2019.
George Washington and Victory at IAD
Source: Terry Australis
Nonfarm Payroll Employment Growth in Context
Blockbuster (absolute level) growth number for nonfarm payroll employment. But does the percentage growth rate in NFP dispell the prospect of recession in the near future? I don’t think so.
Guest Contribution: “Economic Policy Uncertainty and Recession Probability – July 2019 Update”
Today, we are fortunate to present a guest contribution written by Paweł Skrzypczyński, economist at the National Bank of Poland. The views expressed herein are those of the author and should not be attributed to the National Bank of Poland.
Judy Shelton Confuses Me: On Interest Rates, Currency Manipulation
With Judy Shelton’s nomination to be a Fed governor, it behooves us to consider her views on the world. I will point out two salient (there are many) areas of confusion about her views: (1) interest rates and monetary policy easing, and (2) currency manipulation.
The Trump Administration Is No Friend of the Farmer: Part 15,327
Price index for gross value added in farm sector is falling (cumulative 8% under Trump) while that in the nonfarm business is rising (cumulative 3.5%).
Figure 1: Log price index for gross value added in nonfarm business sector (blue), and farm sector (red), 2017Q1=0. Pink shading denotes period during which China has tariffed US soybeans. Source: BEA 2019Q1 3rd release, authors’ calculations.
Soybean Watch in the Wake of the Trump-Xi Standstill
On July 12th, 2018, the closing price for a CBOT soybean futures contract expiring on July 12, 2019, was 885.75. As of 1:40PM Central on July 2nd, the price of the July 2019 contract was 877.00, 0.99% difference. In other words, soybean futures are (still) doing pretty well in terms of forecasting.
Figure 1: Price of contract for soybeans futures expiring July 2019 (black line), fifty data moving average (blue line). Source: ino.com accessed 7/2 1:40PM, and author’s annotations.
In other words, despite the Trump-Xi trade truce, soybean prices remain mired at where they were nearly a year ago (which is why I think Brad Setsers’ “standstill” better describes the outcome).
Chinese GDP Growth: Now and Near Future
I’ve noticed a tendency for some commentators to believe the Chinese economy is about to topple. One such instance is Gordon Chang writing in the National Interest:
Take the year 2016 as an example. The NBS reported that China’s gross domestic product grew 6.7 percent that year. In 2017, however, the World Bank issued a bar chart showing that China’s GDP increased only 1.1 percent
One has to wonder why in 2019 Chang is citing an unspecified 2017 World Bank report regarding 2016 performance. Well, time to — gasp — look at the data.
Plain-Vanilla Term Spread Model: Recession Probability for 2020M06=42%
(7/1 – with update including credit spread augmented specification.) Estimated probit over 1986M01-2018M06 period (assuming no recession as of 2019M06):
Prob(recessiont+12=1) = -0.323 – 0.869Spreadt
McFadden R2 0.295, observations = 390, bold denotes significance at 5% msl. Spread in percentage points.