CPE Numbers Live — Everything In Line — One Word: Goldilocks -- March 29, 2024

Locator: 46860ECON.

41-minute video: live and now re-playing. Awesome. Good for CNBC to have done this.Truly incredible. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMC5goa2ft8.

Best analysis begins at 8:25 on the video. Really, really good. One word: Goldilocks.

Re-live it "live" at 18:58!  Personal spending up 0.8! A stellar number; best number since January, 2023; everyone really, really excited by that number. Seems to have completely surprised everyone.

Steve Liesman: amazed by spending numbers. Taking inflation into account, real spending was up an incredible 0.4. All things being equal, this will raise GDP. Commerce Dept has already raised GDP estimates. 

Gotta love the headlines above, but one of the five is most entertaining. Hint: TET is British. Europe and British economies have tanked. 

But wow, 3..4% GDP and inflation running in line with expectations. Whatever happened to all that talk about a recession?

Real spending numbers support Liz Sonders' chart on corporate profits.

41-minute video: live and now re-playing. Awesome. Good for CNBC to have done this.Truly incredible. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMC5goa2ft8.

Numbers came in “in-line.”

General consensus: two cuts in 2024. Many disagree. Again, soft landing or “no landing” which I call a “touch and go” is still the consensus. Market suggests this with another S&P record high yesterday.

Everything suggests not much is going to change very soon. 

GDP estimate raised again by Commerce Dept.

Discussion pivots to labor report next week.

Better: talking about growth and wages and jobs and not Fed rate.

All-in-all, great news for investors. Nothing in report to scare investors Monday.

Resilient US consumer. 

Diane Swonk at13.00 minutes is "must-listen." Social security bump very helpful. Two-thirds of Americans feel "richer" than last year. Mentioning social security right in line with my thoughts here. For a huge sub-segment of the over-65 group, that increase in social security was absolutely not needed and goosed the economy overall. 

At the end of the day, Steve Liesman says JPow is having a "good Friday." In fact, JPow is having a "great Friday."

By Monday, this will all be old news and forgotten.