Inside Markets — Record Consumer Cash

According to the Fed, U.S. consumer cash reserves (checking, savings, money market funds) reached a record $21T in Q1’25, up from $14.8T in Q4’19 (pre-Covid baseline). This increase in cash one of the main reasons to be optimistic about continued economic resiliency. Historically, U.S. consumers spend until they lose their job, which makes incoming labor market data critically important. The biggest near-term data point will be the June Jobs Report due next Friday. Consensus is looking for non-farm payroll growth of +116,000 and a 4.3% Unemployment rate. In our view, equities will continue to move higher so long as non-farm payroll growth is greater than +100,000. This level of payroll growth is roughly aligned with weekly jobless claims remaining below 275,000.