Another busy week for the market—while the Fed concluded its April meeting with little fanfare, China’s mounting debt garnered attention. Preliminary U.S. GDP readings came out and Apple found itself on the negative side of the news. Get the details in this week’s digest…”
Apple Inc. a Rotten Apple? – Apple Inc. did something it hasn’t done in 13 years—experienced sales declines quarter over quarter. It was a tough quarter for the world’s largest company with earnings per share coming in at a lower than expected ($1.90), and with profits falling by nearly $3 billion to $10.5 billion on the quarter. Revenues also disappointed, with a 13% decline on plummeting Asia sales. China fell by approximately 26% as consumers seemingly latched onto the Galaxy S7 instead (which was strategically launched in Q1). As if by a changing of the guard, Samsung crushed first quarter earnings on the coattails of strong Galaxy S7 sales, posting a 14% profit increase to $4.6 billion. The crossover in our view does not necessarily speak to the long-term strength or weakness of one company versus the other, but does offer insight into the underlying stability of the market for smartphones. Strong earnings may have swapped in the quarter, but the consumer has remained strong throughout.
Chinese Debt a Fast-Growing Concern – In the past couple of years, China’s slowing growth has sold numerous headlines, but another less told story is that of the mounting debt the country is taking on to fight the “hard landing.” By some estimates, China’s total debt is estimated to stand at some $28 trillion, which means it’s nearly quadrupled over the last five to six years. You don’t have to be an economist to see that as an ‘alarming rate.’ Nevertheless, with the state owning large portions of the debt and a debt to GDP ratio just under 300%, it’s actually quite manageable and could be eradicated if China decides to shrink the balance sheet. That’s not likely to happen anytime soon, as the growing debt has been part of China’s effort to keep the economy stimulated. This story is something to keep an eye on, but in our view it still doesn’t warrant sounding the alarm.
Advance Estimates of U.S. GDP Growth – the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has released a preliminary reading of U.S. GDP, which estimates that GDP grew by 0.5% over the quarter. Of course, this being the first release, we expect the final figure to change by at least 50 basis points in either direction. According to the BEA, a deceleration in PCE (personal consumption expenditures), a downturn in federal government spending, an upturn in imports and larger decreases in private inventory investments in exports were partly offset by an upturn in state and local government spending and acceleration in residential fixed investment. What’s perhaps most notable here is that federal government spending is set to rise over the course of the year, which should help keep it from weighing on future GDP readings for 2016. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 1.4 percent, and the BEA noted that the deceleration reflected a larger decrease in nonresidential fixed investment.
The Fed Flies Like a Dove – the Fed concluded its April meeting this week to basically no fanfare, and they decided to hold rates steady in the 1/4 to 1/2 percent target range (as widely expected). According to the Fed’s statement, their monetary policy stance remains accommodative as they continue to support further improvement in labor market conditions and a return to 2 percent inflation. Yet in the same breath, the Fed also notes that labor market conditions have improved further even as growth in economic activity appears to have slowed. They see growth in household spending as moderated, although households’ real income has risen at a solid rate and consumer sentiment remains high. In the housing sector, there have been improvements since the beginning of the year, but business fixed investment and net exports have been soft. Two factors continue to affect these strong fundamentals: 1) inflation has continued to run below the Committee’s 2 percent long-run objective—partly reflecting earlier energy price declines and falling non-energy import prices, and 2) global weakness and market volatility have made the Fed reluctant to add any further to concerns. Better for now to just stay quiet. They expect economic activity to expand at a moderate pace and labor market indicators to continue to strengthen, but inflation is expected to remain low in the near term—in part because of earlier declines in energy prices. These pressures should ease over the course of the year as the transitory effects of declines in energy and import prices dissipate and the labor market strengthens further. This will pave the way for perhaps two more rate hikes in 2016, at minimum.
Disclosure