Featured in: Charts of the Week on March 11
We published this chart as markets reacted to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As crude prices increased sharply, we drew parallels with famous oil shocks (and recessions) dating back to the famous OPEC embargo crisis of 1973.
Since March, oil prices have fallen back below their long-term trend, but all eyes are on prospects for a recession in 2023.
Featured in: Charts of the Week on March 25
The ‘credit impulse’ represents the flow of new credit from the private sector as a percentage of gross domestic product. In March, we created a credit impulse measure for the US, China, and Eurozone (G3). We found a correlation that suggested a measure of global sentiment was set to decline.
Thanks to feedback from our community of users, several adjustments have been made to this chart since it was first published. Credit impulse is now measured more accurately and has rebounded since March.
This indicator is positively correlated to the US ISM Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (0.67, with 14 months of lag). This correlation implies US PMI should rebound above 50, indicating the manufacturing economy is generally expanding.
Featured in: Charts of the Week on May 27
By May, Chairman Jay Powell was determined to tame inflation, but markets were not fully anticipating the severity of the tightening cycle that followed.
The version of the chart below published in May anticipated that the Federal Reserve’s key interest rate would peak at 3 percent, as predicted by Fed funds futures. As we can see, the market now anticipates a terminal rate of about 5 percent in a few months’ time.
The predicted pace and length of the cycle has not changed that much from perceptions in May, however: both show a peak reached 18 months after the start of the cycle.
Featured in: Charts of the Week on July 29
Natural gas inventories were in the headlines all summer amid grave warnings that Europe might face a winter shortage. In July, only four EU countries exceeded the bloc’s storage targets.
European countries subsequently rushed to buy gas on the market and found alternatives to Russian shipments. This led to record prices (especially for the benchmark Dutch TTF gas futures). Today, almost all EU countries are above the 80 percent capacity threshold set by the European Commission in the summer, as the chart now shows.
Featured in: Charts of the Week on August 19
In 2022, were you on “team transitory” or were you concerned inflation would persist?
When we first published this chart, our idea was to display several scenarios for the year. We showed that even assuming consecutive growth rates of zero month-over-month, US inflation would still be above 5 percent on an annualised basis at the end of the year.
It turns out that reality was roughly in line with our more pessimistic August scenarios: the latest inflation print was above 7 percent.
Updating our chart to peer into 2023, only a scenario of consecutive month-on-month decreases of 0.3 percent or more could bring inflation back to the Fed’s 2 percent target within the next six months.
Featured in: Charts of the Week on August 26
When we first published this heat map, we had no way of knowing that inflation had reached its peak (at least temporarily). But there was a patch of cool blue indicating a broad-based decline in commodity prices was underway.
The updated heat map clearly indicates how this trend has spread: all of its indicators have slowed over the past four months.
Featured in: Charts of the Week on September 2
Luckily for Europeans, electricity prices didn’t follow the futures curve we drew back in September. Prices dropped in October amid balmy temperatures and are returning to levels roughly in line with winter 2021.
That’s still historically high, but it seems that the worst is behind us.
Featured in: Charts of the Week on September 9
There has been no paradigm shift since we first published this chart three months ago. Countries that were tightening kept on hiking rates.
However, it is worth noting that among the four exceptions to the trend (China, Japan, Russia and Turkey all decided to cut rates in 2022), there has been only one nation that has loosened policy very recently. Turkey cut its key rate in November, while the other three economies kept their key rate unchanged.
