The relatively dovish Chicago Fed chief Austan Goolsbee on Tuesday trumpeted the makings of a spectacular soft landing for the economy – highlighting how the economy’s on course for the biggest non-war-related one-year drop in inflation in a century and with the jobless rate still below 4%.
Wall St banks too seem to be falling into line. Bank of America is the latest to say it no longer sees another hike.
And will crude oil prices still on the backfoot and declining at a 10% year-on-year rate, the disinflation cheer spreads out across the world.
Catalyzing the biggest two-day gain in UK’s FTSE 250 of mid-cap stocks in more than three years, British inflation cooled more than expected in October as household energy prices dropped from a year ago and lopped more than two percentage points off the headline CPI rate to 4.6%. Gilt yields and sterling dropped back.
And although it’s clawed back some ground today, not least against sterling, the 1.5% drop in the dollar index on Tuesday was its biggest daily fall of the year.
Elsewhere, Chinese stocks climbed in the slipstream of the global markets rally and better October economic news – with 4% spike in Chinese property shares spurred by a report that authorities plan to provide at least $137 billion of new funding to prop up the embattled housing market.
U.S. corporate news stays on retail later as Target reports earnings, following a beat by Home Depot on Tuesday.
In regulatory filings, Berkshire Hathaway said on Tuesday it has shed its holdings in General Motors and Procter & Gamble and trimmed its stake in Amazon as the conglomerate controlled by billionaire Warren Buffett boosted its cash pile to a record $157.2 billion.
