Focus On the Payment, Our Economy Works In Cycles

I want to talk about interest. I want to make this all about what's going on with the fear around interest rates. When are they going to come back down? That's a huge question right now, and I'm bringing it up because I'm getting asked that a lot.

I was on a Market Trends committee meeting yesterday with DMAR and that also became a debate, whether it was going to be eight months or 24 months from now before we see some sort of drop in interest rates. We have experts on Housing Wire and on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and NAR, all confessing some predictions about interest rates.

The Federal Reserve has a single mandate at this time. They are typically a two-mandate agency working on the things that people purchase, the price that people purchase things at, which is really inflation controlling the price that Americans pay for the products they buy. And then the second thing is providing a space where those people who want to work can find jobs. This is keeping unemployment low and keeping inflation low. Right now we've got a lot of wage inflation, which is driving up our overall inflation, our core inflation if you will. We've got headline and we've got core, and I'm really talking and focusing on core because headline right now is coming down because gasoline is coming down, but core is staying strong. So as I'm looking at interest rates over the next two to three quarters, I'm really watching employment, specifically unemployment, because when unemployment starts to go up, the feds measure right now, their target is 4.4.

Headline inflation一commonly known as the CPI一includes more volatile food and energy price data, whereas the core inflation index excludes it. Headline inflation is better, but core is concerning.

There are still core components to inflation that are holding on. The biggest one is wages. The Fed wants to calm wages, they want people lose their jobs and go get another job for less money. They want people to stay unemployed for a short period of time to stop spending. They need demand and supply to come back in check that is going to control inflation and allow it to drop back down again, which is going to help our bonds and our interest rates. It hinges on employment.

I still believe that we're not in a recession yet. We're seeing manufacturing slowing down. We're seeing unemployment that went the wrong way. Unemployment has to go up all the things. That is why I think we're going to see interest rates dip at the end of next spring.

Listen to the full episode for more details on this logic and insight from Nicole in this episode of The Double Comma Club, "Focus On the Payment, Our Economy Works In Cycles."