Good afternoon. Here’s your Economic Early Warning Report for Friday, Friday, 20 February 2026.
SELECTED COMMENTARY
- BANK OF AMERICA:
- “4Q/4Q 2025 GDP growth is likely to come in around 2.4%. This is a remarkable figure, given the headwinds from tariffs and the government shutdown.” [Morning Market, 20 FEB]
- “In the BAC aggregated card data, online retail (card not present) spending per household has been accelerating since early 2025.Meanwhile, brick & mortar spending has mostly been on the decline… [S]pending growth has been faster among higher incoming HHs (“K-shaped economy”), who do more of their shopping online.” [Morning Market, 19 FEB]
- GOLDMAN SACHS:
- “Initial jobless claims declined by more than expected in the week ended February 14. Initial claims declined the most in New York and Pennsylvania, possibly reflecting unusually cold weather. The Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index increased to 16.3 in February, above expectations. The composition of the report was weak, with declines in the new orders, employment and shipments components,but the 6-months-ahead business expectations index increased.” [USA, 19 FEB]
- “While we wouldn’t take the above-consensus 130k rise in US nonfarm payrolls in January entirely at face value, we think the strength in the January household survey is harder to dismiss and view it as further evidence that the US labor market is taking early steps toward stabilization. We expect this stabilization to persist as we expect only a slight rise in the unemployment rate to 4.5% by year-end (from 4.3% inJanuary) and a small pick-up in hiring, which should be sufficient to sustain job growth at a breakeven pace. But we continue to see US labor market risks as tilted toward a worse outcome. This partly owes to a weak starting point for labor demand,with job growth very narrow and confined to the healthcare industry while job opening and hiring rates are very low and still trending lower, but mainly to the possibility of faster and more disruptive AI deployment. For now, though, we find that job losses from AI are visible but narrow.” [Top of Mind, 19 FEB]
- “A surprising share of investors expect further fiscal stimulus measures this year, with 43% expecting some kind of tariff rebate or tax cut to be enacted this year,and 60% expecting a large increase in defense spending.” [US Daily, 19 FEB]
- “Global oil prices have not declined despite a global surplus. One key reason for this disconnect is that much of this global surplus has materialized as rising inventories of sanctioned crude “stuck at sea” while OECD stocks in pricing centers have remained stable.” [Oil Analyst, 18 FEB]
- “[Back in September 2025] [O]ur commodities team highlighted how the stalling of globalization will push governments towards insulating commodity supply chains by reshoring where possible and stockpiling where not. And now, the US announced Project Vault which is a new US public-private initiative to build a Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve, funded by up to $10bn from US Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and $2bn from private industry, aimed at buffering supply chains where critical minerals are geographically concentrated… while the project formally covers all 60 USGS critical minerals, stockpiling is likely to be driven by large US end-users(e.g. manufacturers, hyperscalers) and focused on smaller, highly import-dependent markets such as heavy rare earths, rather than applied uniformly across all commodities. For copper, such a US stockpile could absorb most of the projected 300kt 2026 global surplus, shifting the market from oversupplied to balanced,implying 5% upside to our 2026Q4, and 19-25% upside if strategic stockpiling broadened globally.” [Morning Market Intel, 18 FEB]
- “In the US, softer consumer data contrasts with improving labor markets, keeping our 12-month recession odds at 20%.” [Market Intel, 17 FEB]
- JP MORGAN:
- “Iran nerves still driving markets here with the dollar generally performing well as people derisk…” [G10FX, 19 FEB]
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