Invesco Fixed Income shares its views on rates around the world.

Last week, investors were lamenting the lack of inflation. This week, they’re fixated on its rise. On Thursday, data showed consumer prices climbed 0.4% in August from a month earlier and 1.9% from a year earlier, a sign that inflation is once again on the upswing after months of soft readings.

This is part one of a comprehensive primer on cryptocurrencies and blockchains.

In the 80 years since Keynes published his General Theory, few questions have been as controversial as whether or not government spending can stimulate a weak economy. New research shows that stimulus spending indeed does work, even for countries facing high debt burdens, unemployment and inflation.

At the October 2002 market low, the S&P 500 stood -49.2% below its March 2000 peak (-48.0% including dividend income), with the Nasdaq 100 having lost more than -82.8% from its high, on the basis of both price and total return. The loss wiped out the entire total return of the S&P 500, in excess of Treasury bills, all the way back to May 1996.

The major US indices all recorded new all-time highs (ATH) this week. The very broad NYSE, covering 2800 stocks, also made a new ATH, suggesting the rally is supported by adequate breadth. Longer-term studies and the fundamental macro data continue to indicate that further upside into year-end is odds-on. On a short-term basis, there are several reasons to be on alert for weakness over the next week or two. An important FOMC meeting is on deck for Wednesday.

With its ability to validate all transactions in an immutable electronic ledger, the blockchain has the potential to be as disruptive as Amazon was in the late 1990s. When the company went public in 1997, there were serious doubts whether people would willingly give up their credit card information just to buy a book. Since then, Amazon stock is up 8,000 percent, and founder Jeff Bezos briefly overtook Bill Gates in July to become the world’s wealthiest person.

September has historically been a tough time for stocks and there are multiple potential pitfalls to look out for this year as well. But economic and earnings growth—both domestic and global—continues to look healthy and we expect the bull market to continue. Remain globally diversified, but also disciplined around target asset allocations; and use any volatility for rebalancing purposes.

The S&P opened Friday near its Thursday close and began to climb around 2pm. The index closed the day over 2500, another all-time high and a 0.18% gain from Thursday. The index is up 11.68% YTD.

Note: With today's release of August's Retail Sales and yesterday's release of August Consumer Price Index, we've updated this commentary to include the latest Real Retail Sales. Month-over-month nominal sales in August fell by 0.2% (0.21% to two decimals). Real Retail Sales, calculated with the seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index, decreased by 0.6 (0.61% to two decimals). The chart gives us a close look at the monthly data points in this series since the end of the last recession in mid-2009. The linear regression helps us identify variance from the trend.

Today's report on Industrial Production for August shows a 0.9% decrease month-over-month, which was below the Investing.com consensus of 0.1%. Industrial Production peaked in November 2014, only one point higher than its pre-recession peak in November 2007. The year-over-year change is 1.54 percent, down from last month's YoY increase.

Today's release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 143.3, up 1.5 from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at 3.08%, down from 3.65% last week and its tenth consecutive week of declines. The WLI Growth indicator is now at 0.3, also down from the previous week, its lowest since March of 2016.

The University of Michigan Preliminary Consumer Sentiment for September came in at 95.3, down from the August Final reading of 96.8. Investing.com had forecast 95.1.

A review of last month’s market-moving events across countries and asset classes.

So, I am sitting here in downtown Saint Petersburg, Florida at 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning awaiting the “great flood.” It was just a few days ago the computer models had hurricane Irma heading up the east coast of Florida, but Irma changed her mind.

This morning we got the latest Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The diffusion index for General Business Conditions at 24.4 was a decrease of 0.8 from the previous month's 25.2. The Investing.com forecast was for a reading of 19.0.

Global markets have been relatively calm this summer despite many uncertainties. Geopolitical risks have continued across the globe, and in some areas, looming monetary policy changes also appear likely. A key question for many investors is whether the sleepy summer period of low volatility will give way to a more turbulent autumn.

The Federal Reserve is likely to decide next week to begin letting assets roll of its balance sheet as bonds mature, instead of reinvesting the proceeds. This means that the balance sheet will begin to shrink in size and other market participants will be forced to absorb the supply of new issuance of treasury and mortgage backed securities.

The Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U) released this morning puts the year-over-year inflation rate at 1.94%. It is below the 3.76% average since the end of the Second World War and just below its 10-year moving average, now at 1.75%.

Unmet borrower needs continue to grow in the U.S. commercial real estate lending market.

Here is a table showing the annualized change in Headline and Core CPI, not seasonally adjusted, for each of the past six months. Also included are the eight components of Headline CPI and a separate entry for Energy, which is a collection of sub-indexes in Housing and Transportation. We can make some inferences about how inflation is impacting our personal expenses depending on our relative exposure to the individual components.

Rick Rieder explains the economic implications of “the Amazon effect.”

Many investors no longer view the US as the global safe haven to turn to during bouts of volatility. We argue that US and global fundamentals remain strong, however, many global investors seem to be losing religion.

Let's do some analysis of the Consumer Price Index, the best known measure of inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) divides all expenditures into eight categories and assigns a relative size to each. The pie chart illustrates the components of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers, the CPI-U.

Today's seasonally adjusted 284K new claims, down 14K from last week's 298K, was better than the Investing.com forecast of 300K. Hurricane Harvey and Irma impacted this week's claims.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the August Consumer Price Index data this morning. The year-over-year non-seasonally adjusted Headline CPI came in at 1.94%, up from 1.73% the previous month. Year-over-year Core CPI (ex Food and Energy) came in at 1.68%, down fractionally from the previous month's 1.69%.

Let's have a look at a long-term perspective on Treasury yields. The chart here shows the 10-Year Constant Maturity yield since 1962 along with the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) and inflation. The range has been astonishing. The stagflation that set in after the 1973 Oil Embargo was finally ended after Paul Volcker raised the FFR to 20.06%.

Since the summer of 2016, the global economy has been in a period of moderate expansion, yet inflation has yet to pick up in the advanced economies. The question that inflation-targeting central banks must confront is straightforward: why?