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By Mike Dolan

LONDON, Feb 8 (Reuters) – Like mirages on the horizon, recession forecasts seem to be appearing and disappearing with great regularity – questioning any investment conviction, the reliability of pandemic-distorted data and still-low volatility gauges in financial markets.

In just six weeks of 2023, economic forecasters have hurriedly revised away this year’s long-assumed recessions in euro zone and evDEn EvE nAKliYaT the United States – confounded as they were by a mix of warm weather in Europe and some wild U.S.jobs market revisions and statistical quirks that have dramatically reshaped the interest rate outlook stateside.

Throw in China’s unexpectedly swift removal of “zero COVID” restrictions and already 2023’s global picture looks radically different than it did only in December – never mind the previous January before the Ukraine invasion redrew inflation, interest rate and investment maps for everyone last year.

Bearing in mind the United States, China and euro zone together account for well over half the annual $101 trillion of global output, that’s some collective moving target.

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs – often a market mover with its big macro calls – is a good example.Last month it revised away forecasts for a euro zone contraction this year and this week cut its chances of a U. Here’s more information about EVden eve NAkliyaT look into our own site. S. recession in 2023 to just one-in-four from one-in-three previously.

Yet as recently as mid-December, forecasts from Bank of America, Barclays and BNP Paribas were also plumping for a full-year contraction of U.S.gross domestic product this year.

Last month’s Bank of America survey of fund managers around the world still had net 68% expecting recession this year.

But no one’s quite sure all of a sudden – and so much for so-called ‘leading indicators’ like the historically inverted U.S.Treasury yield curve – traditionally a sure fire predictor of downturns ahead.

Last Friday’s red hot January employment report is forcing hurried rethinks everywhere. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated baldly that the lowest jobless rate since 1969 is simply inconsistent with recession this year and Federal Reserve policymakers are already turning even more hawkish on the rate outlook.

Rates markets reared up to price Fed rates back above 5% and EvdEn EVE NaKliYat now expect them higher at yearend than they are today.Stocks swooned again and currency strategists, such as the team at Morgan Stanley, switched negative views on the U.S. dollar worldwide to neutral all of a sudden.

If that wasn’t enough whiplash, Fed Chair Jerome Powell chimed with his colleagues on more that needs to be done to tackle inflation – but also laced his comments with expectations of a cooling jobs market and opined on the difficulties predicting this cycle.

In other words, if your outlook hinges on getting a recession call right or nailing the timing of peak interest rates, be prepared to shift it now from week to week.

HOARDING AND FOMO

What’s the big deal?As famed British economist John Maynard Keynes is often quoted as saying: “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions.”

But the problem may indeed be the “information.”

To be sure, the dance around the “R word” is a little artificial.Rigid technical definitions involving consecutive quarters of contraction may mean changes are only the difference of a couple of tenths of GDP either way, the sort of margin easily revised away down the pike anyway.

A bigger issue is whether monthly data can be trusted for steer on the business cycle you’re trying to second guess.

High-frequency economic numbers were bamboozled by the pandemic’s economic shutdowns and reboot worldwide – with distortions still lingering on everything from supply chains to labour force participation, savings, consumption and policy rescues.

The energy shock around Ukraine merely compounded that by amplifying an outsize inflationary twist and household squeeze while jamming some supply chains even more.

Monthly economic updates now require significant health warnings and assumptions of “normalisation” may have been premature.

Although not inconsistent with other tight labour market soundings, the U.S.January jobs report was riddled with revisions, remodelling and seasonal adjustments.

While that may not change your view of employment today, reasonable concern about labour hoarding and lags between announcements of company layoffs and data surveys mean it’s hard to rely on it solely for a change of course the way many in markets seem to have done since Friday.

But even doubts about the data can be read both ways.Barclays’ economists stressed there was evidence of job hoarding in the fact that a huge downturn in the U.S. housing market last year clearly hasn’t shown up in construction layoffs. And if the Fed had assumed those job cuts would come and the sector is already bottoming, there may be more aggressive policy ahead.

But the numbers are so unclear, EVdEn EVE nakliYAT we’re still in a guessing game.

“It would be helpful to hear an assessment of what the Fed actually thinks is happening given structural economic changes, cyclical impulses and poorer quality data,” lamented UBS economist Paul Donovan ahead of Powell’s speech on Tuesday.

Investors trying to bet on where all this pans out can’t be filled with confidence.

And yet market volatility gauges have stayed peculiarly serene.

At just under 20, Wall Street’s VIX is pretty much at its average for the 33 years of existence.Bond market volatility remains well above its 20-year mean – but it has retreated sharply to two-thirds of last year’s peaks. Even currency volality is only marginally above average.

Are people just peering through the noisy macro and fearful of missing out on the return to beaten down assets?

BNP Paribas Chief Economist William De Vijlder talks of the risks of being “three times wrongfooted”.

“One would expect that bond and equity markets would rally when central banks signal that the tightening cycle is (almost) over,” he said.”But such positioning comes with the risk of being wrongfooted by the data. What follows is huge volatility.”

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.

(by Mike Dolan, Twitter: @reutersMikeD; Editing by Josie Kao)

At the beating heart of Moscow, directly opposite the Kremlin on the eastern side of Red Square, you’ll find Russia’s most famous shopping mall.

Known as GUM, the ornate neo-classical building sits a stone’s throw from St Basil’s cathedral and the mausoleum of Lenin, the man who attempted to overthrow capitalism. 

Yet it has, in recent years, been filled with ‘landmark’ stores owned by luxury brands anxious to soak up the cash being liberally sprayed around by the post-Soviet oligarch class.

When they aren’t applauding the tanks that occasionally rumble over nearby cobblestones, cronies of Vladimir flock to this marble-floored emporium, arm-in-arm with their high-maintenance wives, mistresses and girlfriends to spend ill-gotten roubles on handbags, Tiffany jewellery and Hugo Boss suits.

At least they did. In late February last year, everything changed. That was when their autocratic President decided to invade Ukraine, turning Russia into a global pariah overnight.

As Putin’s soldiers raped and murdered their way across the country, Western consumer brands began responding to public revulsion by literally shutting up shop. 

Within weeks, the UK, EU and many Western countries had imposed sanctions to prevent fresh supplies of luxury goods from reaching Russia.

Today, the GUM centre’s Chanel, Tiffany and Hugo Boss outlets have closed their doors. 

You can no longer shop for shoes by Jimmy Choo or John Lobb, or handbags from the houses of Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Hermes. If you have any issues with regards to where by as well as tips on how to use eVdEn Eve NAkliyat, you can e mail us with our web page.  

As they boarded up their boutiques and cancelled shipments of fresh stock to Russia, these famous purveyors of luxury goods simultaneously issued earnest PR statements expressing their desire to, as the saying goes, ‘stand with Ukraine’.

But today, almost a year after Putin’s tanks rolled over the border, shopaholics of the Russian elite aren’t entirely out of luck.

For beneath the building’s glass-domed roof, the Mail this week made a scandalous discovery: outposts of not one, but two famous British luxury brands are very much still open for business.

One is Paul Smith, the Nottingham-based purveyor of stripy scarves and modish menswear that its eponymous multi-millionaire founder and owner likes to describe as ‘classic with a twist’.

While their compatriots fire missiles into Kyiv’s schools and apartment blocks, I can reveal Russians are still rattling the tills at the local Paul Smith boutique from 10am to 10pm, seven days a week, happy to fork out 16,900 roubles (£197) for one of the brand’s signature colourful ties and EvDeN eVe naKliYAt much else.

The shelves remain well-stocked with many of the very latest Paul Smith products.

Indeed, on Wednesday an assistant attempted to flog our reporter an ’embossed leather folio’ — a sort of briefcase — from the firm’s ‘new season’ range, which only went on sale in the UK a few weeks back. Its price?A trifling 90,000 roubles, or £1,050.

Scandalously, the man whose firm made (and is therefore profiting from) this expensive trinket is not just a Knight of the Realm.

For in addition to being honoured by Tony Blair in the heyday of Cool Britannia — having served on New Labour’s Creative Industries Task Force — Sir Paul Smith, 76, was last year invited to Buckingham Palace so that Prince William could elevate him to membership of the Order of Companions of Honour, one of the highest gongs available to anyone in the creative industry.

The Moral Ratings Agency, a lobby group which monitors Western firms operating in Russia, describes his firm’s presence there as a ‘disgrace’, telling the Mail Sir Paul ought to get his brand out of Russia or be stripped of his titles.

A few doors down from Paul Smith’s red-fronted shop — and also open for business — you’ll find GUM’s branch of Agent Provocateur, the upscale English underwear brand popularised by Kate Moss in the 1990s. It is also stocking designs from the new season.

One of no fewer than ten Russian Agent Provocateur boutiques that are still open — all of which remain advertised on its British website — we found it selling crystal-embossed leather bondage whips for 73,000 roubles (£850), EvdEN EVe Nakliyat bejewelled pink brassieres for 110,000 roubles (£,1280) and thongs for up to 85,000 roubles (£990) each.

An assistant told us the last shipment of new stock arrived shortly before Christmas and a new one is due in March — just in time for International Women’s Day.

Again, it’s hard to see how this British luxury goods firm squares its presence in Moscow with the supposed values listed on its website. 

Shamelessly, given Russia’s ongoing use of rape as a weapon of war, Agent Provocateur claims to be dedicated to promoting ‘fearless femininity’ and is ‘adhering to the highest standard of ethics’.

The firm’s current owner, high street tycoon Mike Ashley is, however, no stranger to cutting lucrative business deals in questionable dictatorships. 

His moral compass was seemingly untroubled by his recent sale — for more than twice what he had paid — of football club Newcastle United to a Saudi Arabia-backed consortium.

Once they have stocked up on clothes and lingerie, every good oligarch needs a bespoke Rolls-Royce to whisk them from central Moscow to their gaudy dacha.

Which takes us to the British luxury car firm’s main Russian showroom, on the ground floor of an upscale hotel just across the Moskva river, roughly two miles west of Red Square.

Rolls-Royce insists it no longer sells new cars in Russia, claiming in a holier-than-thou media announcement that: ‘We stand for the peaceful co-existence of all cultures all over the world, in all times and at all locations.’