ECONOMICS

By Todd Maiden of FreightWaves

A couple of truckload carriers said the bottom of the cycle has likely occurred but acknowledged that any material positive inflection in fundamentals won’t happen until sometime in 2024. That likely means a “muted peak season” again this year.

He said after months of a very flat freight environment marked by customers rightsizing inventories, there is some merchandise restocking occurring currently. Bruffett noted demand improvement during the (more…)

As we previewed earlier, while the ECB decision was a tough call and while pure mathematical consensus expected no hike today, moments ago the ECB surprised the consensus (if not our readers) with what is most likely the final rate hike, when it raised all three deposits rates by 25bps (and the key Deposit rate for the 10th consecutive time to a record 4.00%) because while "inflation continues to decline but is still expected to remain too high for too long. The Governing Council (more…)

With China's economic data on a relentless downslope for the past several months, there was a sliver of hope this morning when the PBOC reported the latest credit data which came in stronger than consensus expected after a dismal July, as seasonal patterns and policy easing likely contributed to the rebound of credit growth in August.

With total social financing and new loan growth rebounding strongly last month, household loan growth rose to a still-modest 4.7% MoM annualized from 0.8% (more…)