The Fed added $82 billion in Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) and $65 billion in Treasuries to its balance sheet while allowing $22 billion in repo agreements to roll off the balance sheet. The net gain was $126 billion in the month that the “taper” was set to begin.
Gold finally broke through the $1,800 resistance after yet another sizzling hot CPI read. Could $1,900 be next?
The analysis last month and the month before showed that a breakout in the price of gold looked to be very close.
It happened!
The federal budget deficit in October came in at $165 billion. That represents a staggering 36.8% of total expenditures for the month.
This is slightly below the 12-month average where the deficit represented 39.3% of total expenditures. Over the twelve-month period, the total deficit was $2.65 trillion driven by total expenditures that reached $6.7 trillion.
The following analysis breaks down the huge October federal budget deficit and sets it in historical context.
The October CPI data came in even hotter than expected, and we saw widespread price increases across multiple categories.
The following provides an in-depth analysis of the most recent CPI data.
The Federal Reserve has slightly slowed its asset purchases over the last few months. Was this a trial mini-taper?
If so, the results are not good news for the central bankers over at the Fed.
The Fed balance sheet stands at $8.56 trillion. That’s up by $108 billion from the prior month-end, but down over the past week by $8.7 billion. The chart below shows how the Fed Balance sheet has grown by instrument over the last 18 months.
In the latest period, M2 increased by $163 billion and sits just shy of $21 trillion. This represents a 0.78% MoM increase which annualizes to 9.8%. This is below last month’s rise of $254B and last September’s rise of $223B.
The federal budget deficit for September 2021 was $61.5 billion, down from the $171 billion in August. Even though the deficit fell 64% MoM, it was driven primarily by receipts. Spending was up 18.7% MoM but receipts were up 71.2% driven by a surge in corporate and individual taxes.
The analysis last month showed that selling exhaustion may be near in the gold market. Since then, gold continues to be range-bound between $1750 and $1800 running up against both solid resistance and support. Meanwhile, silver has shown a mini-breakout.
The $1800 level for gold is in play this week and could open the door for a big move if it gets through it soon.
The CPI data for September came in hotter than expected at 0.4%. That pushed the yearly gain to 5.4%. But an honest CPI calculation would come in even hotter.
I am doing something different this month. In past reviews of the CPI, I typically take the BLS data and recalculate the values to get a more detailed number that is rounded to two decimal points instead of one. This methodology also allows me to show the impact of each component on the top-line number.
For the second month in a row, the jobs numbers in September came in well below expectations.
The Labor Department reported an increase of only 194,000 jobs, well below the estimated 500,000. The big miss was similar to August’s report.
Despite the unemployment rate ticking down to 4.8% from 5.2% and an upward August revision of 131,000 jobs, this is the weakest jobs report since January.
