Was that it? Was that the top? A week ago, the market fell 2.7% as President Trump announced an additional 100% tariff on Chinese goods starting November 1st. Since that Friday selloff, the market has stabilized and recovered a little over half that one day loss. The S&P 500 is now down just about 1.5% from its all-time high. Is [...]
You knew something had to shatter the calm. The market had become too complacent, making money was too easy lately. It has been 27 trading weeks since the last big tariff announcement - Trump's "liberation day" when he announced reciprocal tariffs on the entire world last April - and in 17 of those weeks, the S&P 500 traded higher, a [...]
There has been a lot of change in economic - and other - policies this year but not much change in the economic outlook. We've had a large tax hike in the form of import taxes (tariffs), a comprehensive tax and spending bill, a DOGE attack on various government departments, more government employee layoffs than has ever happened in one [...]
The federal government shut down last week so we didn't get the monthly employment report last Friday and I think that may be the best news investors have gotten all year. I expect a lot of government generated economic reports to be missed during the shutdown, which I think could drag on a lot longer than previous versions. With the [...]
The price of gold set an all-time record last week, with futures trading over $3800 and spot prices just a bit less. The new price high was also an inflation-adjusted all-time high, breaking the previous record set in 1980 of about $3500 in today's dollars. The most important question facing investors today is this: why has gold more than doubled [...]
The Federal Reserve cut their target for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points last week due to concerns about labor market weakness. Job creation has certainly been weak the last 3 or 4 months but that is largely due to the uncertainty created by the Trump administration's haphazard implementation of their economic program. Well, not entirely. It is [...]
The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee met last week with both Lisa Cook and Stephen Miran voting (more on that later). The committee lowered the target for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points and hinted at future cuts: Recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity moderated in the first half of the year. Job gains have slowed, [...]
With the dollar index and interest rates in downtrends, it seems the US economy is slowing absolutely and relative to the rest of the world. The slowdown, so far, doesn't look that severe and we are likely to get a rate cut from the Fed this week. Last September, the Fed surprised the market with a 50 basis point cut [...]
Nuance: A subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound. A subtle difference or variation. The origin of the word nuance is a Latin word, "nubes", which means cloud. It is also from the French "nuer" which means "to shade". Why am I parsing the meaning and origin of the word nuance? Because we seem to have lost [...]
I've said many times that no one should pay much attention to the monthly payroll figures because they are barely more than wild guesses, something the current administration's economic team only recently discovered. Last week's report for August, by itself, doesn't mean much and will be revised so I wouldn't put much emphasis on it. What investors should pay attention [...]
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