Fannie Mae’s Economic & Strategic Research (ESR) Group just released its June Economic Outlook wherein we read they adjusted their full-year growth projection down to 1.9 percent from 2.3 percent before, taking into account the downward revision of Q1 GDP growth.
From here on and thanks to continued strengthening in employment and household income the people at Fannie Mae expect growth to rise to 2.4 percent annualized in Q2, and it to rise further in H2 to an average of 3.0 percent.
They also expect total housing starts to rise around 10 percent and total home sales in 2015 to rise around 5 percent (May home sales came in 24 percent above the 2014 level and near a 7-year high, with mortgage originations in 2015 increasing approximately by 23 percent to $1.46 trillion.
On their expectations about interest rates they say: “Given the uneven economic growth in the U.S. and slow growth around the globe, interest rates are unlikely to surge. This should enable the housing market to better withstand some headwinds from higher rates this year than in the past.”
All by all good signs, which are of course not written in stone.
About the revision of Q1 GDP that is due today, I only want to say it might be helpful to remember U.S. GDP revisions take place for up to 80 years after the first release.
Nevertheless, no doubt revisions surely help us to get a somewhat better idea how things are performing.
Besides all that and especially related to what’s going on in the for the moment “bullish” markets that includes the relatively strong euro behavior against the dollar, I don’t think it’s an overstatement when I say all this is to most of investors “all Greek!”
One thing that’s for sure, and looking back in time, markets have now been close to three decades in a central bank-caused “boom and bust cycle.”
It all started when in October of 1987 when markets crashed and Fed Chair Mr. Greenspan responded with a very sizable monetary policy downward adjustment with the overnight repo rate plunging close to 2 percent from about 7.4 percent to about to 5.5 percent. His actions gave later birth to what’s still called the “Greenspan Put” and that since about 2001 has made most investors firmly to believe central banks will always be there to manage markets when severe downturns occur.
They have been right till now and when the busts occurred in 1998, 2000 and 2008, when easy money allowed after the busts full “risk-on” behavior thanks to easier funding for e.g. those using leverage, which, among other things, allowed then “carry trade” becoming the dominant force in the currency markets.
This is important when we try to understand what’s going on today. Looking at the foreign exchange markets, in Q1 of 2015 we have seen speculative players being net buyers of euros and that now since about a month and a half, real money players have been building short euro/dollar positions. Translated in understandable language this means, in case there doesn’t happen a Grexident and the Greek crisis gets a “kick the can” temporary solution, we shouldn’t be surprised to see a substantial downward move in the euro/dollar currency pair.
To put it clear, such a move in itself doesn’t mean exaggerated risk taking. On the contrary and what is a serious risk taking situation is when investors, as is the case today, thanks to the easy money provided by the Fed, that has created close to irresistible attractive funding possibilities that finally has fed directly into the kind of today's environment Mr. Bernanke already
warned of in May of 2013 when he said: “… In light of the current low interest rate environment, we are watching particularly closely for instances of ‘reaching for yield’ and other forms of excessive risk-taking, which may affect asset prices and their relationships with fundamentals…”
All investors could do well today asking themselves if the markets they have today interests in are at levels that reflect the fundamentals or not.
Now, and related to all what’s going with Greece and if markets would finally get their so much hoped for “solution”, which wouldn’t be a solution at all as the fundamental problems would still remain and without durable solution, don’t be surprised we could get one of those “buy the rumors, sell the news” moments that could impact even the broad markets far from Greece.
In the meantime, Spanish and Italian 10-year bond yields have jumped as Greece's proposals haven’t been accepted so far.
Don’t worry, we haven’t seen the end yet.
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