Succinct Summation of the Week's Events

Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events:

Positives,

1)The February CPI rose by .2% headline and core with both one tenth below expectations. These are off .5% and .4% gains for each in January. The y/o/y gains are 2.8% and 3.1% respectively vs 3% and 3.3% in the month prior. Energy prices were up by .2% m/o/m and down .2% y/o/y. Food prices were higher by .2% m/o/m and 2.6% y/o/y with eating out driving the increase. ‘Food away from home’ prices were up .4% m/o/m and 3.7% y/o/y though ‘food at home’ saw no price gain m/o/m but up 1.9% y/o/y. Services inflation ex energy prices grew by another .3% m/o/m and by 4.1% y/o/y. Core goods prices continue to show signs of bottoming out, up by .2% after a .3% rise in January and are unchanged y/o/y.

2)The February PPI was unchanged. That was well below the estimate of a .3% increase but mostly offset by a two tenths upward revision to January to a .6% gain from .4% initially. The core rate was lower by one tenth m/o/m vs the estimate of up .3%, partly mitigated by also a two tenths upward revision to January to up .5%. Versus last year, headline PPI is still up 3.2% y/o/y vs 3.7% in the month before. The core rate is higher by 3.4% vs 3.8% in January.

3)Initial jobless claims totaled 220k, down 2k w/o/w and below the estimate of 225k. Continuing claims fell to 1.87mm from 1.897mm.

4)Wage growth remains pretty good as the Atlanta Fed released its February wage growth tracker which rose 4.3% y/o/y vs 4.1% in January, 4.2% in December and 4.3% in November. For a 'job switcher', wages were higher by 4.8%, the same pace seen in January. For a 'job stayer', they accelerated to 4.4% growth vs 4.1% in the three prior months.

5)The number of job openings in January totaled 7.74mm, up from 7.51mm in December which was revised down by about 100k. This compares with 8.03mm in November and 7.62mm in October. The hiring rate was 3.4% and December was revised up to the same level from 3.3% initially. For perspective, 3.2% matches the lowest since 2013 not including Covid. The quit rate did rebound to 2.1% vs 1.9% in the two prior months.

6)With a further drop in mortgage rates to an average of 6.67%, purchase applications rose 7% w/o/w after a 9.1% rise in the week before that followed four weeks in a row of declines. Refi's were higher by 16.2% w/o/w after jumping by 37% last week.

7)From Oracle: "this was our strongest booking quarter ever by a large margin...Speaking of data centers, we marked a milestone this quarter as we crossed into triple digits with our 101st cloud region coming online."