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DoubleLine’s Eric Dhall and Ryan Kimmel run down the June 8-12 market week, which marked the arrival of the historic SpaceX IPO – an impressive debut for a company with no profits, as Mr. Dhall notes. Aside from the SpaceX splash, the broader equities market was up a little with quite a bit of dispersion in performance. Fixed income (3:37) was positive across the board, with a rally in rates catalyzed by talk of a potential ceasefire. Commodities (5:22) were down for the week, led by energy, but the spike for Dr. Copper could be a positive sign. On the macro front (9:45), the big story was some hot CPI and PPI inflation prints. While the headline numbers were pretty stark, Mr. Kimmel takes a look underneath the hood to provide a more detailed prognosis. He notes that the CPI and PPI numbers are pointing to a hot PCE print later in the month. Next week (18:57) will be all about the inaugural FOMC meeting for new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh. Messrs. Dhall and Kimmel look forward to his debut, cautioning that the arrival of a new chair often leads to some market volatility. Be sure to check out DoubleLine’s Fed Day coverage, including CEO Jeffrey Gundlach joining CNBC’s “Closing Bell” to share his thoughts on the new chair and his first post-FOMC meeting press conference. Minutes will be off next Friday for the Juneteenth holiday but will return June 26. Happy holiday!

DoubleLine’s Jeff Mayberry and Mark Kimbrough survey a June 1-5 market week ending with a selloff in stocks (1:28) led lower by the high-flying tech, consumer discretionary and communications services sectors; higher, flattening bond yields (4:14); and weaker commodities (6:18) with the exception of energy. The risk retreat came on Friday’s strong payrolls report for May, which topped the week’s macro news (7:52) that also included a resilient ISM manufacturing report and an April JOLTS report showing a persistently low-hire, low-fire labor market. Payrolls strength disappointed the doves. Fed funds futures (15:30) now price a hike in the rate by the end of the year. Jeff Mayberry, however, opines that the overall macro picture so far is unlikely to show to new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh a case for tighter official short-term interest rates. The most-anticipated macro prints (18:40) for the week of June 8-12 will be the May CPI and PPI reports on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.

On the last trading day of May, DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Eric Dhall and Macro Asset Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel review a month that saw a few tech giants (0:41) drive the S&P 500 to new highs while bond yields eased (5:56) albeit to still elevated levels versus the start of the month. Commodities (10:53) declined, led by energy. These moves came amid a ping pong of headlines fueling both hopes for a détente in the Persian Gulf and fears over the precarity of the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran. “The U.S. is negotiating with some more moderate people in Iran, but the guys with the guns don’t necessarily agree with those moderates,” Eric Dhall notes. “It’s tough to believe that this situation is going to blow over until we start seeing ships transiting through Strait of Hormuz.” On the macro front for the week (13:27), Ryan Kimmel notes that despite softer-than-expected readings on the PCE Deflator for April, inflation still “is not moving in the right direction and remains well above the Fed’s targets.” Looking inside the personal income report for April, he notes real wages and salary growth turned negative. For the week ahead, the biggest item will be the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ payroll and unemployment reports for May.

“I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” – Democratic Election Strategist James Carville, 1993 DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Eric Dhall and Analyst Mark Kimbrough survey a “neck-snapping” week ended May 15 that saw stocks (0:32) sell off Friday after the S&P 500 marked an all-time high on Thursday. The party crasher came from the fixed income market (3:27). Inflation-focused bond vigilantes sent Treasury yields higher by 20 basis points or more from two-year to 30-year tenors across the curve. The Bloomberg Commodity Index (9:21) edged higher, amid wide dispersion, as energy rallied, copper was flat and precious metals were sold. Macro news (11:21) began with a consensus-matching April CPI on Tuesday but was dominated by an April PPI on Wednesday showing broad signs of inflation. Eric Dhall suggests Friday’s fixed income vigilantism amounted to a “delayed reaction” to the week’s earlier inflation news. Eric and Mark note fed funds futures are pricing in a Fed standing pat until July 2027. The May 18-22 week will be a light one for the statistical mills, with the most notable items being an FOMC minutes release, jobs claims and S&P Global manufacturing and services reports.

DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Jeff Mayberry and Macro Asset Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel on May 8 review a stock market (0:39) dominated over the month by a handful of tech giants, a fixed income market (3:32) earning its carry while Treasuries danced to oil’s war tune. Commodities ended the month mixed with energy lower amid gains for industrial and precious metals. The week’s macro news (7:41) was led by stronger-than-expected nonfarm payrolls in April, with Ryan noting improving breadth in terms of sectors adding vs. detracting jobs as well as more jobs in the cyclically sensitive sectors. On the inflation front, he points out a trend of higher prices paid within the ISM services report for April. Consumer prices, Ryan adds, appear to be outpacing income, as registered in May by the lowest reading on the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index since its inception in January 1978. For the May 11-15 week, the April CPI report (due Tuesday) and PPI report (due Wednesday) will land on the top of Jeff and Ryan’s desks. They also will be on the lookout for Thursday’s jobless claims report and for retail sales, in particular, the inputs into the consumer spending component of gross domestic product.

DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Jeff Mayberry and Analyst Mark Kimbrough survey April market returns, with stocks (0:32) rebounding strongly from wartime losses in the prior month, and IG fixed income (2:55) managing a positive carry in the face of rising yields. Emerging markets debt led risky credit with a 2.7% return. Commodities (3:58) moved higher, led by energy. The week ended May 1 was packed with macro news (6:35), with strong readings in capital goods spending driven by tax-code changes incentivizing business investment and AI investment, and strong but decelerating personal incomes. The April 29 FOMC meeting (8:05), Jerome Powell’s last as Fed chair while he stays put atop his Fed governor’s perch, was characterized by a single dovish dissent from the committee’s decision to leave rates unchanged and three hawkish dissents over the faint signal of easing bias left in its policy guidance. That behavior was enough, Mark notes, for fed funds futures to reprice from a 25% probability of a single rate cut in 2026 to just about nil “as far as the eye can see.” Looking ahead (18:39) to May 4-8, Jeff and Mark will have their eyes on unemployment and payrolls prints for April as well as JOLTS, ISM services and import-export reports.

DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Eric Dhall and Macro Asset Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel on April 24 review a market week with U.S. stocks nearing all-time highs (0:56), led by rampaging tech, in the teeth of Washington and Tehran’s “double embargo” of the Persian Gulf. Semiconductor hunger (2:58) fed historic rallies in chipmakers and in the South Korean and Japanese stock markets. Fixed income (4:18) staged no big moves, with investment grade sectors slightly lower amid steepening in the belly of the yield curve. Commodities (6:18) moved higher, led by energy, alongside a stronger dollar and weaker gold. Ryan explains the interesting month-long correlation between two-year Treasury yields and WTI prices. Macro news (8:16) was light for the week. Eric points out that retail sales and S&P Global manufacturing signal a U.S. economy “humming along” notwithstanding the wartime shock to energy prices. With Kevin Warsh having “dodged any flak” during his Tuesday congressional testimony and the Justice Department Friday dropping its investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, “the path is pretty much clear” for Warsh’s succession to the chairmanship, Eric says. For the week ahead (15:05), with Wednesday’s FOMC likely promising a nothing burger for Powell’s last session presiding over the rate-setting body, Eric and Ryan will be on the watch for the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller house price indices, durable goods order, personal income & spending, the PCE Price Index.

Risk assets rallied the week ended April 17, sending stocks (0:43) to all-time highs on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite, while fixed income (4:49) rallied across sectors, led by emerging markets, and across the yield curve. DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Eric Dhall and Asset Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel welcome the market driver: signs belligerents in the U.S.-Iran war might de-escalate and re-open the Strait of Hormuz. Eric and Ryan, however, take a wait-and-see stance amid uncertainties on a hope-for road from ceasefire to lasting peace. Within the rally in rates, Eric notes most of the gains occurred within the belly of the yield curve, with minimal easing in the long bond reflecting growing apprehension over America’s deficit and debt benders. Commodities (6:08) were lower on the week, led by energy, but beneath the broad indexes Eric points out areas of appreciation, including in precious and industrial metals as well as agricultural products. Surveying market moves over the breadth of the U.S.-Iran conflict, Ryan highlights that U.S. rates “are still quite a bit away” from their levels “at the start of conflict.” Inflation is still running higher than Federal Reserve targets, crude oil and distillate prices remain higher than before the conflict, and “one-year inflation swaps are 50 basis point higher. I think the market is pricing in a Fed on hold.”

DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Eric Dhall and Analyst Mark Kimbrough analyze two weeks ended April 10 of markets convulsed by the fog of war, then unleashed by a no-less nebulous ceasefire. Macro news similarly was dwarfed by events in and around the Persian Gulf. “This is not an easy market to see through,” Eric comments. “There’s a lot of fog of war, impeding investors’ ability to discern the fair price of securities right now.” As Exhibit #1, Eric cites the dramatic dispersions in stocks (2:18). For example, he points out the selloff in the SP 500 in the wake of the outbreak of war on Feb. 28 and the ferocious rally after the ceasefire announcement. Fixed income (6:56) likewise witnessed a selloff in rates, sending the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate down about 1 1/2% after the bombs started dropping, but “April to date it’s up 29 basis points,” Eric says. “These competing forces on interest rates are duking it out: the short-term inflationary impulse and the longer-term inflationary impulse from the fiscal overhang because the war costs money and potentially increases deficits.” Commodities (11:24) were no exception to the split-personality markets, surging 34% from Feb. 27 but giving up about 5% in April month-to-date. Mark Kimbrough, while warning “economic data are being dwarfed by the impact of the headlines,” covers the macro reports (15:58) for the past two weeks. These include expected war-related spikes in energy prices and a drop in the U-3 unemployment rate to 4.3%. Mark cautions that the drop in joblessness was largely due to jobseekers dropping out the labor pool. Surveying the release of the March 18 FOMC meeting minutes, Mark sees “more support for the Fed to sit on their hands,” notwithstanding rising hopes among traders for fed funds cuts this year. “The fog of war is the state of ignorance in which commanders find themselves … not only of their enemies, but also of their friends.” Sir Lonsdale Augustus Hale, The Fog of War (1896) “we now see through a glass darkly” Paul of Tarsus, I Corinthians 13:12 (circa 53-55 C.E.)

With the S&P 500 nearing a 10% drawdown from its Jan. 27 closing high, DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Eric Dhall and Macro Asset Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel survey the week ended March 27. They start with a stock market with multiple stock sectors (0:30) in the red, energy the only positive sector for the week and month-to-date. Fixed income (3:43) was flat on the Bloomberg Aggregate investment-grade benchmark, albeit with rates higher in the belly of the Treasury curve. Commodities (6:14) as tracked by the BCOM were flat, with the energy sector actually down while agricultural products and industrial metals ended the week in the green. With the caveat that most macro reports (12:42) still have yet to catch up with reality post Iran war, Ryan looks beneath the relatively benign aggregate readings of S&P Global PMI goods and services reports for March and sees higher costs being passed along to consumers. Looking ahead to the Good Friday-abbreviated week of March 30-April 3, Eric is keen to see the March BLS payroll and unemployment reports (due Friday), “the first report that will take into account all the disruption we’ve seen” since the outbreak of Iran conflict.