After covering the markets for the holiday-shortened week of Feb. 20-24, mostly positive for stocks (00:18) and bonds (1:52) and mostly negative for commodities (3:30), DoubleLine’s Jeffrey Mayberry and Mark Kimbrough run down a relatively light week of macro news (5:13), including resilient employment numbers and S&P Global U.S. PMI prints in expansionary territory. For their Topic of the Week (11:57), Jeff and Mark look at the recent LEI* release and the way the publisher, the Conference Board, has changed its approach to LEI data that takes the pressure off a bellwether metric that has been pointing toward a recession in the U.S. since July 2022, when it turned negative year-over-year. They go through the 10 inputs that comprise the index and their weightings, and how the Conference Board now does not forecast a recession for 2024. Jeff and Mark discuss this shift in approach, which Mark terms a moment of capitulation on the LEI. Looking ahead to next week (20:41), Jeff and Mark preview some of the upcoming prints, including durable goods; home prices; consumer confidence; and the PCE, the Fed’s favorite inflation metric.
*For more on the Conference Board Leading Economic Index, check out Episode 29: Recapping Markets/Macro and Eyeballing the LEI
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Mr. Mayberry joined DoubleLine in 2009. He is a Portfolio Manager on DoubleLine’s strategic commodity strategy while working in portfolio management and trading for derivatives‐based and multi‐asset strategies. Mr. Mayberry is a Strategist on the Fixed Income Asset Allocation Committee and a contributing member on our Global Asset Allocation and Macro committees. He also co-hosts DoubleLine’s weekly Monday Morning Minutes (Twitter @DLineMinutes, Minutes@Doubleline.com) podcast. Prior to DoubleLine, Mr. Mayberry was a Senior Vice President at TCW for nine years within the Mortgage Group, where he specialized in portfolio and fund monitoring and analytics. He holds a B.S. in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College and an M.S. in Financial Engineering from the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.
Mr. Lau joined DoubleLine in 2009. He is a Strategist on the Fixed Income Asset Allocation (FIAA) Committee and a contributing member on the Global Asset Allocation and Macro Committees. Mr. Lau is a Portfolio Manager on DoubleLine’s strategic commodity strategy while working in portfolio management and trading for derivatives-based and multi-asset strategies, including DoubleLine's Shiller Enhanced CAPE®, Shiller Enhanced International CAPE®, Real Estate and Income, and Multi-Asset Trend strategies. He also co-hosts the Sherman Show (Twitter @ShermanShowPod, ShermanShow@Doubleline.com) and Monday Morning Minutes (Twitter @DLineMinutes, Minutes@Doubleline.com) podcasts. Prior to DoubleLine, Mr. Lau was a Vice President at TCW where he worked under Jeffrey Gundlach as a Research Analyst in the Mortgage Group. He holds a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
