A Week of Vol on Hawkish Powell and Weak Labor

DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Jeff Mayberry and Analyst Mark Kimbrough survey the stock, bond and commodity markets for the month of July (0:37) and the “week of volatility” ended Aug. 1 (3:39). The latter, they note, was driven by a week packed with macro news (7:41). That environment included a more hawkish-than-expected Fed chairman amid rare public dissents on the FOMC on Wednesday and Friday’s overwhelmingly negative payroll and unemployment reports. Mark Kimbrough also singled out the U.S. Treasury’s quarterly funding announcement (9:16). With elevated deficits locked in under Trump’s budget legislation, Mark notes there was “a sigh of relief” in the T-bill market after the government announced “nominal-coupon and floating-rate auction sizes are expected to remain stable for the next several quarters.” Jeff Mayberry, watching fed funds rate expectations (21:33), says the futures market, on Powell’s guidance, Wednesday had priced in 1.3 quarter-point cuts by the end of 2025. Those market odds surged to 2.3 cuts on Friday’s labor reports.