Thursday, April 14, 2022
Initial Jobless Claims this morning came in at +185K — +18K month over month, and the highest weekly level in six of the past seven weeks. That said, we’re still comfortably below the psychologically pleasing 200K mark; this is a good indication that the U.S. labor market remains strong.
That said, going back to the week of March 20 and again on April 3rd, we may have seen the lows for this cycle, which also happen to be the lows of the last 54 years. That we’re bouncing up 18K week over week is not too concerning at this point. Another +18K would bring us back over 200K, which we’ve only seen three times in the past 12 weeks.
Continuing Claims ratcheted back down to 1.48 million from 1.52 million posted the last time around (a week in arrears from Initial Claims, so a downward move was expected). It’s the lowest print we’ve seen in the past 12-week cycle, another morsel of information that we’re at strong levels in the U.S. labor force.
Retail Sales for March were a tick down from expectations: +0.5%, and 30 basis-points lower than +0.8% posted for February. It’s the second month in a row off the wild volatility we saw in December (-2.7%) and January (+4.8%), which were likely augmented by seasonal shopping patterns disrupted earlier by ahead-of-time holiday gift-buying, as supply chain issues have been with us in a major way for at least the past six months.
Looking under the hood a bit, “real” Retail Sales — this monthly figure adjusted for inflation, which we already know is very high — came in at -0.7%, discounting 120 basis points from the headline number. This follows a 0.0% on “real” Retail Sales for February, which represented an 80 basis-point gap for that month. Just another way to measure what’s going on, and what’s happening is this adjusted gap is widening.
Import Prices leaped a full percentage point from February to March, +2.6% — 40 basis-points above consensus estimates. This infers the high inflation pressure we’ve seen in other data — particularly CPI and PPI numbers earlier this week — and asserts that inflation is a big part of the global economy, not just here in the U.S. Energy and food prices were the main culprits, to absolutely no one’s surprise.
But the main story taking up all the oxygen in the room this morning is Elon Musk’s aggressive move to put a buy offer on Twitter for $54.20 per share, or roughly $43 billion. The Tesla CEO and current “richest man in the world” put forth an 18% premium to Wednesday’s closing price of Twitter, and some back-of-the-envelope math would suggest Musk could finance the whole thing himself with shares of Tesla (of which he owns 173 million), or could employ some billionaire friends to join him in the acquisition.
However, with few financing measures even mentioned in this proposal, it’s doubtful this is even a truly serious bid at this point. Recall Musk had bought 9.2% of Twitter a couple weeks ago, and the board made sure to notify the public Musk would not be part of its board of directors. So now Musk comes with an offer to buy the whole company — and then says it’s his “final offer.”
This is not the way these things usually take place. Perhaps this is part of Musk’s individualistic manner to do things his own way (cue the Frank Sinatra music), but that’s not necessarily to say he gets what he wants whenever he wants it. The Twitter board could easily respond with a “Thanks, but no thanks.” Then what? Would this idea simply blow away?
Questions or comments about this article and/or its author? Click here>>
Image: Bigstock
Jobless Claims Up, Retail Sales Down; Musk Trying to Buy Twitter (TWTR)
Thursday, April 14, 2022
Initial Jobless Claims this morning came in at +185K — +18K month over month, and the highest weekly level in six of the past seven weeks. That said, we’re still comfortably below the psychologically pleasing 200K mark; this is a good indication that the U.S. labor market remains strong.
That said, going back to the week of March 20 and again on April 3rd, we may have seen the lows for this cycle, which also happen to be the lows of the last 54 years. That we’re bouncing up 18K week over week is not too concerning at this point. Another +18K would bring us back over 200K, which we’ve only seen three times in the past 12 weeks.
Continuing Claims ratcheted back down to 1.48 million from 1.52 million posted the last time around (a week in arrears from Initial Claims, so a downward move was expected). It’s the lowest print we’ve seen in the past 12-week cycle, another morsel of information that we’re at strong levels in the U.S. labor force.
Retail Sales for March were a tick down from expectations: +0.5%, and 30 basis-points lower than +0.8% posted for February. It’s the second month in a row off the wild volatility we saw in December (-2.7%) and January (+4.8%), which were likely augmented by seasonal shopping patterns disrupted earlier by ahead-of-time holiday gift-buying, as supply chain issues have been with us in a major way for at least the past six months.
Looking under the hood a bit, “real” Retail Sales — this monthly figure adjusted for inflation, which we already know is very high — came in at -0.7%, discounting 120 basis points from the headline number. This follows a 0.0% on “real” Retail Sales for February, which represented an 80 basis-point gap for that month. Just another way to measure what’s going on, and what’s happening is this adjusted gap is widening.
Import Prices leaped a full percentage point from February to March, +2.6% — 40 basis-points above consensus estimates. This infers the high inflation pressure we’ve seen in other data — particularly CPI and PPI numbers earlier this week — and asserts that inflation is a big part of the global economy, not just here in the U.S. Energy and food prices were the main culprits, to absolutely no one’s surprise.
But the main story taking up all the oxygen in the room this morning is Elon Musk’s aggressive move to put a buy offer on Twitter for $54.20 per share, or roughly $43 billion. The Tesla CEO and current “richest man in the world” put forth an 18% premium to Wednesday’s closing price of Twitter, and some back-of-the-envelope math would suggest Musk could finance the whole thing himself with shares of Tesla (of which he owns 173 million), or could employ some billionaire friends to join him in the acquisition.
However, with few financing measures even mentioned in this proposal, it’s doubtful this is even a truly serious bid at this point. Recall Musk had bought 9.2% of Twitter a couple weeks ago, and the board made sure to notify the public Musk would not be part of its board of directors. So now Musk comes with an offer to buy the whole company — and then says it’s his “final offer.”
This is not the way these things usually take place. Perhaps this is part of Musk’s individualistic manner to do things his own way (cue the Frank Sinatra music), but that’s not necessarily to say he gets what he wants whenever he wants it. The Twitter board could easily respond with a “Thanks, but no thanks.” Then what? Would this idea simply blow away?
Questions or comments about this article and/or its author? Click here>>