via YAHOO NEWS:
Just over half of the 50 U.S. states are exhibiting signs of slowing economic activity, breaching a key threshold that often signals a recession is in the offing, new research from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank report said.
That report, released Wednesday, followed another report from the San Francisco Fed from earlier in the week that also delved into the rising prospect that the U.S. economy may fall into recession at some point in coming months.
The St. Louis Fed said in its report that if 26 states have falling activity within their borders, that offers “reasonable confidence” that the nation as a whole will fall into a recession.
Right now, the bank said that as measured by Philadelphia Fed data tracking the performance of individual states, 27 had declining activity in October. That’s enough to point to a looming downturn while standing short of the numbers that have been seen ahead of some other recessions. The authors noted that 35 states suffered declines ahead of the short and sharp recession seen in the spring of 2020, for example.
Hedge funds set to mark worst returns in 14 years
Dec 30 (Reuters) – Global hedge funds are set to register their worst returns in 14 years in 2022 after aggressive U.S. interest rate rises hit asset prices hard, however, their declines are overall smaller than the slump seen in equity and bond markets this year.
Some hedge fund strategies that put money in commodities and currencies using macro-focused strategies and exploited price differences between related securities outperformed in 2022, handing decent gains to investors.
“More than at any time in recent history, both equities and bonds have been very sensitive to macro events, particularly to inflation prints,” said Meisan Lim, managing director of hedge fund research at Cambridge Associates.