All Reports

I wrote yesterday that Conagra guided to the higher end of its previous full-year 5-6% cost inflation outlook, the result of rapidly rising transportation/freight costs (the combination of rising trucking rates and rising diesel prices)….

Conagra reported its fiscal 1Q27 results (quarter ended August 30) this morning. There were several themes that I expect will be present on many other consumer (and packaging) companies’ 3Q earnings calls. Demand weakness. Conagra’s…

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) posted the 2026 annual update of the national economic accounts (link) in conjunction with its release of August personal income and outlays. I’ve written about the fact that…

I wrote yesterday about spiking U.S. repurchase agreement (repo) borrowing and the fact that hedge funds have accounted for virtually the entirety of the growth per a just-published NY Fed piece on repo (link). Today,…

I’ve written about the explosive growth of the U.S. repurchase agreement (repo) market since 2022 and the simultaneous deterioration of the quality of the collateral backing a major segment of that market for which the…

Earlier this month, the Richmond Fed published a paper and related brief on bank lending, noting that “the provision of credit to firms and households is a fundamental pillar of macroeconomic performance in the U.S.”…

I’ve previously written about the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’ (BEA) reported planned change in methodology in September that will have the effect of reducing core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) inflation, the Federal Reserve’s (Fed)…

I wrote yesterday about AutoZone’s worse-than-expected domestic sales growth in its just-reported fiscal 4Q26, which was consistent with what many other large U.S. retailers reported in the second quarter (link). I also wrote that the…

The large auto parts retailer AutoZone missed on domestic same-store sales growth in its fiscal 4Q26 this morning (1.6% vs. FactSet consensus of 3.6%), the latest in a long line of large U.S. retailers to…

I haven’t written about the composition of U.S. bank lending in a while because the trends haven’t changed: a disproportionate share of loan growth continues to come from loans to the financial sector, specifically nondepository…

I’ve written extensively about the fact that the U.S. Treasury market has become increasingly price-sensitive in recent years, most recently yesterday (link). That shift is evident in the ongoing decline of long-term Treasury prices/rise in…

The U.S. Treasury released Treasury International Capital (TIC) data for July yesterday (link), and the Financial Times reported in recapping the data that China’s U.S. Treasury holdings fell to their lowest level since August 2008…

I’ve written in recent days/weeks about the intensifying truck driver shortage in the U.S. and the inflationary impact it’s having on consumer, packaging and other companies that use trucks, one of many sources of cost…

I published a note with comments from consumer staples companies presenting at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference last week (link). This week are the Goldman Sachs Global Retailing and Morgan Stanley Laguna Industrials conferences,…

I wrote yesterday afternoon about ballooning margin debt, one of the many indications of historically high financial leverage (link). As if on cue, Charles Schwab reported its monthly activity highlights this morning (link); its investors…