Articles authored by Sonu Varghese

We’ve been talking about the fiscal impulse from the individual tax cuts coming for a while now, and highlighted this as a potential tailwind in our 2026 Outlook: Riding the Wave. Here’s what we wrote in our Outlook: “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) is going to increase deficits by about $4 trillion over …

The December CPI release was an important one because it closes the book on 2025. Here’s how headline and core CPI inflation (ex food and energy) have ended each of the last 4 years: By itself, the drop in inflation is more than welcome, and allows the Fed to focus on labor market risks. But …

The payroll report for the final month of 2025 stayed true to form, with the data all pointing in different directions. The big picture remains the same — a lot of people are working, but hiring is weak for a few reasons. Employers across industries appear reluctant to hire amid economic uncertainty and policy headwinds, …

As we get ready to release our 2026 Outlook, I thought now would be a good time to revisit our 2025 Outlook. I recognize this is rare in our world, as it’s not often you see strategists revisit and reevaluate their calls. We don’t really think of ourselves as forecasters in the strict sense of …

Normally by the end of the quarter we get the second estimate for the prior quarter’s GDP growth (which is slightly more reliable than the first estimate). In the case of this Q3 GDP report, we missed the first estimate because of the shutdown and so the second estimate was the first full picture we …

We finally got more timely data on the labor market and since it’s been a while, I thought I’d put together 11 charts showing what’s happening in the labor market. The big picture is that the labor market continues to cool, with weak hiring but also relatively low firings.   Job Growth Cools, A Lot …

The Federal Reserve cut rates once again, taking policy rates down to the 3.50-3.75% range. This was as expected, but the chatter before the meeting was that this would be a “hawkish cut”. On the contrary, as I’ll discuss below. But even otherwise, it’s hard to say a cut is hawkish when it comes on …

It’s been a while since we got any macroeconomic data thanks to the government shutdown. The most recent official payroll report for September was released a couple of weeks ago, and it showed that the unemployment rate continues to move higher, hitting 4.44% in September. While other data, like initial claims for unemployment benefits, points …

The S&P 500 gained 17.8% over the last 11 months, including dividends. The November return of 0.1% was its 7th straight month of gains, and the index is now just 1% off its all-time highs. While the index was near flat for the month of November, next 12-month earnings rose another 2%, which meant earnings …

Two years ago, when we were writing our 2024 Outlook, we decided to call it Seeing Eye to Eye, with bit of a pun on “AI to AI.” We knew then that the AI impact was coming but also knew we were in early days. In fact, we expected relatively little direct impact on the economy …