Welcome back to Market Movers, the opening bell.
With the government shutdown ending last week, we're past due for key economic US data releases.
Well, this week we'll receive the final November University of Michigan consumer sentiment, as well as the September employment report.
And the US did shed an average of 2500 private sector roles in the four weeks ended November 1st, according to payroll.
ADP.
Now this is a signed job losses slowed heading into this month.
For the four week period ending a week earlier, weekly job losses average about 14,250 positions according to the ADP.
While there's no Fed meeting this month, this data could swing the chances of a December rate cut.
And right now the odds of a rate cut next month hang out around 50%.
4%.
Well joining me on this Tuesday morning is Mark Hamrick, senior analyst for Bankrate.
Well, Mark, good morning.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Well, we did get a weekly jobless claims as well as those ADP figures and all eyes are on the jobs report that will be coming out later this week.
So what are you looking for and when do you think we'll see a return to some sense of normalcy here?
That is a rather ambitious hope in the world we live in, but I think what you're saying is when do we get restored data flow and a better sense of where things stand?
And I think it's going to be mid to late December before we get that because let's think about this jobs report that we're getting here this week.
We're talking about a PS report, a pre-shutdown period, and that period.
Lasted 43 days as we know and we and we've moved on from reopening the government.
So there's quite a lag now in terms of what we're looking for.
It should look fairly similar to what we saw in the reading for August when the unemployment rate was 4.3%, and I'd say, you know, somewhere on the order of about 400 to 50,000 jobs added.
That is very close to the level that is seen, meaning the payroll gain that is seen as necessary to keep the unemployment rate steady in this world where we have less labor supply and less labor demand.
And so what I'm really looking forward to is getting The Fed meeting that you referenced there, the announcement December 10th, and I'm not seeing exactly when we're going to get the November jobs report, whether that'll be on time or whether they have to delay that a little bit.
But in any case, I would look for that either in early or mid December, and then I think we're essentially catching up to where we need to be.
Well, Mark, um, as you mentioned, we are looking forward to the Fed meeting, the final one for 2025 later in December, but of course we've been hearing from Fed officials and we'll be getting those FOMC minutes tomorrow afternoon, so a lot coming down the pike, but the US The government is now funded through January 30th and given that we are also paying attention to what all of this means for the US economy in on top of the big beautiful bill, what are you paying attention to and do you think that January 30th date is just kicking the can down the road?
Well, it absolutely was kicking the can down the road once again on the part of elected officials.
Another head scratcher in the sense of why, right?
Why not just go ahead and move this on if you need to get it, you know, to election day or something like that understood, but it's a disgrace, frankly, that our elected officials can only do the bare minimum and sometimes don't even do that.
And we are talking about the chance that we could go through another shutdown.
I pray that we don't.
The reporting out of Washington indicates that even Republicans are trying to search for a solution with respect to the Affordable Care Act subsidies that were at the heart of the Democrats' resistance, so to speak, in essentially voting in favor of the continuing resolution.
That's a whole other subject, but my point is, to answer your question, there is a non Zero chance that the government could shut down again, and it undermines the trust in government.
It undermines the effectiveness of the government itself, and we're not solving the big problems here, right?
It is that elected officials are doing just enough when they do to keep the government operating, and we know what it looks like when it's not with between the TSA and the air traffic control and the problems with snap, the food stamps and everything else, so.
I do pray that we avoid another government shutdown, but I'm not going to bet the house on it.
Yeah, and Mark, finally one last question for you.
So you've been in that room when Fetcher Powell has his press conference after the rate announcement is announced, but given the fact that the central bank has many tools, whether we're talking about policy or fiscal, what do you think the central bank should be doing at this point and why?
I think they're doing what they should be doing in the sense of monitoring the data very closely.
They are data dependent at this point and unfortunately they've not been getting the gold standard in data, as Chairman Powell has said in describing the federal statistical data flow.
And so I have no idea where the federal funds rate should be.
That's a central banker's question, but I do think it's interesting you watch the speech, read the words of Governor Christopher Waller yesterday, who made the case in a speech in London, by the way, citing some bank rate data on the challenges associated with housing affordability, that he thinks the case is strong to cut rates once again, and that's not a shock and we know we've had dissents on both sides of this recently, Remy, right?
We've had people who thought that rates shouldn't have been cut at the last meeting we had A dissenter who once again thought it should have been a decline of 50 basis points, but I do think it's prudent to think about the risk being to the downside.
And the other part is I don't know that it's going to make a world of difference if we get another 0.25 point easing in the federal funds rate.
We need to really see what the trajectory and and the steady state of the economy is right now.
And as we just discussed, it's going to take us until early to mid December to have a better idea about that.
Well, Mark, as always, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights and perspective and hopefully we can have you back on before your end.
Thank you so much.
