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The S&P started the week below its record high only to jump mid-week amid news of a potential interest rate cut. The index is up over 20% YTD, up 0.78% from last week and has reached a record-breaking 3,013.77

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This morning’s release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 146.2, up 1.0 from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at -2.12%, up from last week. The WLI Growth indicator is now at -1.24, also up from the previous week.

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Today’s release of the June Producer Price Index (PPI) for Final Demand came in at 0.1% month-over-month seasonally adjusted, unchanged from last month. It is at 1.7% year-over-year, down from 1.8% last month, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. Core Final Demand (less food and energy) came in at 0.3% MoM, up from 0.2% the previous month and is unchanged YoY NSA at 2.3%. Investing.com MoM consensus forecasts were for 0.1% headline and 0.2% core.

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The latest full set UIG for June is 2.64% while the prices-only measure is 1.91%. Current Headline CPI is now 1.65% and Core CPI is 2.13%.

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The Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U) released this morning puts the year-over-year inflation rate at 1.65%. It is below the 3.76% average since the end of the Second World War and slightly below its 10-year moving average, now at 1.67%.

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Here is a table showing the annualized change in Headline and Core CPI, not seasonally adjusted, for each of the past six months. Also included are the eight components of Headline CPI and a separate entry for Energy, which is a collection of sub-indexes in Housing and Transportation. We can make some inferences about how inflation is impacting our personal expenses depending on our relative exposure to the individual components.

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Let’s do some analysis of the Consumer Price Index, the best-known measure of inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) divides all expenditures into eight categories and assigns a relative size to each. The pie chart illustrates the components of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers, the CPI-U.

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The latest Fed balance sheet shows a total net worth that is 60.7% above the 2009 trough. The nominal Q1 net worth is up 4.2% from the previous quarter and up 2.4% year-over-year.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the June Consumer Price Index data this morning. The year-over-year non-seasonally adjusted Headline CPI came in at 1.65%, down from 1.79% the previous month. Year-over-year Core CPI (ex Food and Energy) came in at 2.13%, up from the previous month’s 1.99% and above the Fed’s 2% PCE target.

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This morning’s seasonally adjusted 209K new claims, down 12K from the previous week’s revised 222K, was better than the Investing.com forecast of 220K.

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Here’s the latest on the three largest cryptocurrencies by market share: bitcoin, Ether, and Ripple.

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The 20th century Baby Boom was one of the most powerful demographic events in the history of the United States. We’ve created a series of charts to show seven age cohorts of the employed population from 1948 to the present.

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We’ve updated our monthly workforce analysis to include Friday’s Employment Report for June. The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7%, and the number of new nonfarm jobs (a relatively volatile number subject to extensive revisions) came in at 224K.

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Note: This commentary has been updated with the latest numbers from Friday’s Employment Report. Consider: Today nearly one in three of the 65-69 cohort and one in five of the 70-74 cohort are in the labor force.

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Pop Quiz! Without recourse to your text, your notes or a Google search, what line item is the largest asset in Uncle Sam’s financial accounts?
A) U.S. Official Reserve Assets
B) Total Mortgages
C) Taxes Receivable
D) Student Loans

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The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is a simple computation: You take the Civilian Labor Force (people age 16 and over employed or seeking employment) and divide it by the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (those 16 and over not in the military and or committed to an institution).

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At present, multiple jobholders account for just 5.1 percent of civilian employment. The survey captures data for four subcategories of the multi-job workforce, the current relative sizes of which we’ve illustrated in a pie chart.

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Let’s take a closer look at Friday’s employment report numbers on Full and Part-Time Employment.

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The latest monthly employment report showed a gain of 224K nonfarm payrolls, which consists of a gain of 187K service-providing jobs and a gain of 37K goods-producing jobs.

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The latest JOLTS report (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary), with data through May, is now available.

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The headline number for June came in at 103.3, down 1.3 from the previous month. The index is at the 88th percentile in this series.

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The price of Regular and Premium are up three and two cents each, respectively, from last week. According to GasBuddy.com, California has the highest average price for Regular at $3.74 and Mississippi has the cheapest at $2.33. The WTIC end of day spot price closed at 57.66, down 2.4% from this time last week and a 19% increase since the beginning of the year.

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All eight indexes on our world watch list posted gains through July 8, 2019. The top performer is France’s CAC 40 with a 19.19% gain and in second is China’s Shanghai SSE with a gain of 18.99%. In third is our own S&P 500 with a gain of 18.56%. Coming in last is Tokyo’s Nikkei with a gain of 7.59%.

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This morning’s release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 145.3, up 0.9 from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at -2.47%, up from last week. The WLI Growth indicator is now at -1.92, up from the previous week.

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What does the ratio of unemployment claims tell us about where we are in the business cycle and our current recession risk? At present, the ratio for Continued Claims has been trending down.

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This commentary has been updated to include this morning’s release of Nonfarm Employment. June’s 224K increase in total nonfarm payrolls had revisions that resulted in 11K less jobs than previously reported. The Investing.com consensus was for 160K new jobs and the unemployment rate to remain at 3.6%.

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This morning’s employment report for June showed a 224K increase in total nonfarm payrolls, which was much better than forecasts.

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The moving average for the per-capita Light Vehicle Sales series peaked in 1986. Thirty-plus years later, it is now down 29.8% from that 1986 peak.

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In this morning’s ADP employment report we got the June estimate of 102K new nonfarm private employment jobs from ADP, an increase over May’s revised 41K.

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Here’s the latest on the three largest cryptocurrencies by market share: bitcoin, Ether, and Ripple.