MacroEdge 10/27 Weekly Report: The Election Countdown

A broad view at where the economy, markets, and labor market stands heading into an election week happening in just 8 days. #MacroEdge

The Election Countdown (@DonMiami3, MacroEdge Chief Economist)

Good Sunday evening MacroEdge Readers and Community, 

I hope you all are having a great final weekend to wind down October as we head into election week in just a week from today. Headlines and stories on Friday evening were dominated by the potential for a reignition of a broader Israel/Iran conflict - but this was quickly quelled as Israel squashed rumors that it was expanding into any broad attack on Iran. Beyond that - election headlines are now dominating the political and financial media, and this will be the case for the next couple of weeks - or even the next month or so depending on how the results evolve. The results will be determined again by a select handful of swing states (Nevada, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia). You can visit the early voting results to see what trends currently look like. Markets this evening are advancing higher on the lack of a conflict between Israel & Iran and then immediately following the election we get our employment data for October - which we expect to again confirm a broader trend of labor market cooling that we’re seeing in a wide breadth of employment data. Market sentiment also increased to all-time highs - as measured by Top Down Charts Research’s ‘Euphoriameter’ - so the notable moat between employment data and market participant sentiment continues.

Judging from the past two presidential election cycles - this will likely be a circus like no other - and the reactions and policy implications are something that we will have to monitor and respond to as they arrive. Economic signals remain largely mixed - & employment signals will be the most important to monitor over the next two quarters in determining the direction of the ‘landing’. Two core areas of the broader cyclical economy: real estate (remains very weak) and employment (continues to weaken) are not highlighting any sort of broad rebound in activity to this point. With yields - particularly the 10Y - rising back towards 4.3% this evening - this adds further pressure on the real estate & other cyclical sectors reliant on lower rates for activity rebounds. 

If you missed our announcement on the next generation of research, insights, data, and analysis on all things real estate - we introduced our new line of research for the real estate sector: RESights, this past week, RESights, will come available on 10/31 through a standalone RESights access along with access through Ozone as an add-on. All current Ozone members will be grandfathered into RESights access and you will be able to opt-out or in through the next Ozone dashboard update & better select the research & data that is available to you. 

Learn more about RESights and what we’ll be introducing, along with more about the RESights team in our welcome message, as well as on the MacroEdge website: 

Read the MacroEdge RESights Introduction at:

In tonight’s report we’ll dive into the current bond market situation, end-of-month employment outlook (with job postings/openings, job cuts, & more), freight, real estate data, Nevada data (for our usual quarterly update), volatility expectations, & more to prepare for a busy November ahead.