Daily Times

This week, markets have been all over the place. From protests in China to the rapidly demanding interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, stock markets have seen a dire picture, tumbling more than 500 points, Monday for the Dow Jones Industrial. But are the markets really all that murky? No, they haven’t. October saw the market’s best month in decades, despite the vagueness around the recession noise, and November also made gains, that–even a month of protests in different authoritarian regimes around the world–cannot undo.

But of course, even in a bull market, stock markets are only indicators, and can never define the exact monetary moment for the economy, or the individual and volatile business environment.

Heading into the final stretch of Quarter 4, economists seem optimistic pointing towards stable inflationary digits, and a healthy stock market, despite many upsets the market has seen these past few weeks.

Throughout the Pandemic, there has been bleakness in the market relating to recession fears. After much of the uncertainty that followed inflationary fears earlier this year, many companies had come to terms with the fact that a contracting business environment was inevitable. Quarter 3 earnings-however, suggested otherwise. Macy’s reported a forecast cap for its Q3 revenue, at 30 million dollars, over and above the Wall Street estimate. The Comparable sales fell 2.7%, down from the 4.3%, estimated by many market forecasters, signalling what may be a successful project for companies like Macy’s and Belk, looking to re-shape the future to invite a younger consumer base as well as exploring more diverse avenues in the e-commerce sector.

Caps on Russian oil are also inevitable in the coming days at 70 dollars a barrel.

This Quarter-specifically for these retailers, an uptick in the consumption of luxury products also boomed. Macy’s-by by rebranding its luxury products to a new store in New England-tagged as “Bloomingdale”, also saw a 4.1% thrive in the local market.

Some say the global recession is here-but efforts taken by world-leading national banks may suggest otherwise, blurring the horizon’s gloom. Earlier in the summer, and towards the end of Q3, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, to camouflage the effects of an early price hike and likely beat any possibility of a recession, being delayed over and over again. Forecasters displayed early 2022 as a possible stagnation timeline. Then, these were changed to early 2023 and now, have gone all the way down to early 2024. Some suggest that strict action is slowing the effects of the rise in price levels, but others believe,-it’s a crisis, simply not coming.

70% of companies enlisted in the S&P 500, saw numbers very close to Macy’s, according to a FactSet Data estimate. The companies also reported higher estimates for earnings per share, something that could not defeat the 5-year, and 10-year estimates for the index, but over-performed post-pandemic prognostication.

The numbers are not the only sanguine feelings in the market. Many companies, including JP Morgan and Chase, have downgraded their fears for 2023, noting a backtrack from an “economic hurricane”, to a “mild recession,” next summer. Goldman Sachs had the most representative projection for 2023, charting a non-existent recession, though saying that growth will be “slow”.

About this, LPL Financial CEO said “If we fall into recession, it’s not going to be deep and dramatic. …CEOs were worried, markets were completely impaired and volatility was elevated because there was uncertainty”. And to a larger extent, he’s right as negativity in financial services doesn’t exactly cause a flourishing atmosphere for investors.

Interestingly, to this point, oil prices are also seeing a decline. Since early in the summer, they’ve been seeing a decline, to 2021 levels, mostly because of optimality agreements reached between major oil-producing nations, and a strong influence of alternate energy introduced in the market, by companies like Aramco and BP. Towards December-however-oil prices are fearing what happened amidst the Pandemic lockdowns globally-a shortage of demand. A demand shock can be caused by the fluctuation of confidence by Chinese investors, looking to reform a nation that takes in about 14% of global oil consumption.

Following caps by the G7 nations on Russian oil, forecasters seem iffy about how to combat this fluctuation in energy crises. Wood Mackenzie’s VP of LNG research, says, “Those levels of discounts are certainly in line with what the discounts already are in the market … It’s something that doesn’t seem, as it is placed, like it’s going to have any effect [on Moscow] whatsoever if the price is so high.”

Caps on Russian oil are also inevitable in the coming days at 70 dollars a barrel. EU price caps and tensions within the negotiating table are also signalled a volatile front. Deutsche Bank also notes that midst of the Ukraine War, and Russian production for revenue generation (as a sole purpose), supply shocks are also on the skyline. OPEC+ is set to meet on Sunday following lockdown fears in China, but the crisis in China will likely have an adverse effect on Global markets, functioning on the base of a competent and strong US Dollar.

The writer is a columnist and a linguistic activist.