| Good morning. A policy blitz from China, hints on rates from Fed officials and Boeing's latest pay offer. Here's what's moving markets. — Sam Unsted Want to receive this newsletter in Spanish? Sign up to get the Five Things: Spanish Edition newsletter. China's central bank unveiled a blitz of monetary stimulus measures designed to boost the economy and the country's embattled property market. The PBOC cut a key interest rate and plans to reduce the amount of money banks need to hold in reserve in order to boost lending, all alongside a package of measures to shore up the property sector. The moves sent shares in China soaring and bond yields rebounded. The stimulus in China has added some impetus to risk appetite, with US stock futures creeping higher and European benchmarks rising. They've been buoyed by gains for luxury goods stocks and miners, the latter as China's measures caused iron ore and copper prices to climb. Treasury yields are marginally lower and the dollar is mixed. The economic and earnings calendars are both pretty thin for the day, though read Joe's thoughts lower down, on the housing numbers that are on the slate. A handful of Federal Reserve officials on Monday left open the door to the possibility of more large interest-rate cuts to come, saying that the current level is still weighing on the economy. Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said that "we have a long way to come down to get the interest rate to something like neutral." Although he and his colleagues made clear that incoming data will determine what comes next. Boeing offered a 30% pay rise directly to its striking workers as it seeks to overcome a debilitating strike which has hit its plants in the Pacific Northwest, albeit angering union leaders in doing so. The new offer is higher than the 25% turned down earlier in the month but below the 40% bump initially sought by the union. Boeing has said the terms will only be valid until Sept. 27. A bond market quirk which upended the traditional relationship between short- and long-term debt in recent years is fading, with implications for more than $40 trillion in securities. The so-called inversion in yield curves — when short-term rates exceed their long-term counterparts — is unwinding in many pars of the world, surfacing in the UK in July, followed by US Treasuries and now into German and Canadian debt. This is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours. What is the most foolish trade for the rest of the year? Which investment will bring the highest return between now and the end of December? How many more cuts will the Fed deliver and how big will they be? Share your views in the latest MLIV Pulse survey. Today on the docket, we get both the FHFA House Price Index as well as the S&P Core Logic Case-Shiller home price index. Neither one of these are likely to be particularly market moving. That being said, if you wanna talk about real estate, check out the chart of the homebuilder ETF XHB, which is within a hair of all-time highs right now. I have two thoughts here. One is that this doesn't really look like a chart that you'd see in an economy that's going into a recession. Actually, there's virtually nothing in the stock market that looks like a chart of a recession right now. But this definitely doesn't. The other thing is that a lot of people have said that housing is the business cycle. It's kind of a cliche, because historically it's kind of been true. In a normal cycle, one way that monetary policy works is through the housing market, and the related impact on wealth and economic activity. What's strange this time around is that monetary policy has, in fact, had an impact on the housing market. When real rates were deeply negative in the aftermath of the pandemic, homebuilder stocks took off like a rocket. Then when the tightening began, stocks tumbled throughout 2022. Then as things eased up, and the outlook started to brighten, homebuilder stocks surged. So you can draw something of a straight line between monetary policy and the housing market. What you can't do, however, is draw the straight line between housing and the entire economy. So yes, here we are with the Fed likely to ease further, and homebuilder stocks generally on a rampage. But the fact that the homebuilders are kind of disconnected from the broader cycle just further drives home the point, that I talk about a lot, that this isn't your typical cycle, and that many historical patterns or relationships, just haven't really applied for the last 4.5 years. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on X @TheStalwart | 
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