Nominal retail sales grew 1.7% m/m, above Bloomberg consensus of 1.4%. With the advance release of sales, and coincident index from the Philadelphia Fed, we have the following picture.
Today’s TACO Tuesday and the Markets
Gallup, U.Michigan, Conference Board Compared, Plus Morning Consult
Standardized indicators:
How Badly Is the Russian Economy Doing?
Nobody knows. But when the official statistics show negative growth, it must be pretty bad.
Wisconsin Post-“Liberation Day”
Employment and goods exports have declined. GDP flatlines in Q4.
Aizenman, Desbordes and Saadaoui: Quantifying Trade Destruction from Bombs & Bullets vs. Taxes and Sanctions
That’s my description. From their newly released NBER Working Paper, Bilateral Conflict Risk and Trade: Military Wars, Trade Wars, and Diplomatic Noise, by Joshua Aizenman, Rodolphe Desbordes and Jamel Saadaoui:
More on the Gasoline Price Outlook
Lydia De Pillis has an article in the NYT on how gasoline prices don’t move one-for-one with oil prices:
Using Today’s Futures, Don’t Expect Gasoline Prices to Soon Return to Antebellum Levels*
Front month Brent futures (for June) jumped tonight. Where are gasoline prices going, conditional on those futures being predictive.
What Drives the Administration’s Trend GDP Forecast?
Consider this graph, comparing the Administration’s forecast to the latest WSJ forecast, and an error correction model incorporating Census population forecast.
Prediction Markets on Hormuz Strait and June Brent Futures: 6:30PM ET
The optimism of Friday has been wiped away. The odds of a re-opening by May 15 down to 37%, and June contracts up by 5.9%.