Welcome to Thoughts in the Market.

I'm Andrew Sheetz, Chief Cross-Asset Strategist for Morgan Stanley.

Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about trends

across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together.

It's Friday, June 4th at 2pm in London.

One of the pleasures of hosting the Friday slot of this podcast is that once a month,

I get to speak to you immediately after the U.S. reports its monthly jobs number.

This is probably the single most-followed piece of economic data across the market,

as it speaks to both the health of the economy and also how quickly the Federal Reserve may

have to adjust its interest rate policy.

After disappointing figures last month, today's data was more mixed, but broadly in line with

expectations.

This speaks to ongoing uncertainty around the true state of the economy, uncertainty

that we think will persist over the summer as data remains noisy.

But it also speaks to a central dilemma for the Federal Reserve, and a fascinating economic

debate to watch.

The Federal Reserve's job isn't easy, but maybe just maybe for the last year it's been

pretty straightforward.

The Fed has two mandates, to support full employment and stable inflation that's around 2%, and

these can often be in conflict as a stronger economy can lead to higher prices.

But for the last year, the labor market was weak and inflation wasn't usually low, throw

in a devastating pandemic, and there was a clear case for the Fed to provide major support

...