{"id":26264,"date":"2026-02-05T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/?p=26264"},"modified":"2026-02-04T13:58:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T18:58:04","slug":"recent-economic-data-is-good-whats-the-catch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/recent-economic-data-is-good-whats-the-catch\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Economic Data Is Good\u2026 What\u2019s the Catch?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Economic surprises are on the rise. That’s good news for American businesses and their employees.<\/p>\n

But historically, interest rates tend to follow accelerating economic growth. And faster growth in the economy typically pushes long-term interest rates higher.<\/p>\n

That’s the potential bad news.<\/p>\n

The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index measures the difference between positive and negative surprises in the weekly and monthly economic data.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n

And lately the data have been surprisingly positive<\/em>, with the index moving up from near zero at the end of last year to 53.5 this week, a hot reading.<\/p>\n

Perhaps a bit too hot.<\/p>\n

Last week’s Producer Price Index data was also hotter than expected, showing that inflation isn’t dead yet.<\/p>\n

Last month’s core PPI surprisingly jumped to a +3.3% annual rate. And the monthly increase in prices at +0.7% was more than three times more than economists expected!<\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n

This tells me that businesses are still in the process of passing along higher tariff-related costs to American consumers.<\/p>\n

And inflation rolls downhill starting at the producer level but soon moving down the line to show up as higher consumer prices.<\/p>\n

Faster growth in the economy is a good thing. But when it’s accompanied by higher inflation, that typically leads to higher borrowing costs for everyone.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: An accelerating economy, weaker dollar, and higher prices all point to higher<\/em>, not lower<\/em>, interest rates. Higher rates are also a drag on stock prices. And that’s especially true with market valuations as rich as they are today.<\/p>\n

Good investing,<\/p>\n

\"Signature\"<\/p>\n

Mike Burnick
\nContributing Editor, Market Minute<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An accelerating economy, weaker dollar, and higher prices all point to higher interest rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"service":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication":[10],"person":[155],"newsletter-type":[],"ticker":[],"class_list":["post-26264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-minute","publication-market-minute","person-mike-burnick"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26270,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26264\/revisions\/26270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26264"},{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=26264"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=26264"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-type?post=26264"},{"taxonomy":"ticker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ticker?post=26264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}