The biggest challenge for the Federal Reserve in 2015 is going to be trying to convince everyone that it is meeting its dual mandate. That is true of every year, but this one is unique given the threats to undo ZIRP after more than six years of it. On the one hand, there is the “maximum employment” mandate seemingly arrived [...]
It is amazing the speed at which FOMC officials have embraced not falling oil prices but collapsing crude. The pace of the decline is being driven, contrary to the fracking miracle, by the fact that nobody seems to want to bid on the stuff. That is, as I noted earlier, a demand problem. But officials like Fed Vice Chair Stanley [...]
WTI is trading below $64 this afternoon and the long end of the UST curve is being bid rather starkly, the 30-year has dropped below 2.90%, there is an important element to consider about such “price discovery.” As my colleague Doug Terry points out, a 40% drop in oil prices is no longer strictly a matter of finance. In other [...]
Next to Japan’s “unexpected” re-acquaintance with recession, the most serious indication of global economic distress has to be oil prices. And where commentary turned to “explaining” Japanese recession as related to a small attempt at fiscal discipline rather than the more debilitating flirtation with intentional debasement, convention surrounding the precipitous plunge in crude is desperately trying to direct toward “supply.” [...]
Josh Brown at the Reformed Broker had a post last Thursday titled Why Did The Stock Market Sell Off Today?. It is a very clever and funny post that plays off the biases of various media. A sampling: Wall Street Journal: Tensions in Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula Yahoo Finance: Russians Fox Business: Obamacare CNBC: It didn’t sell off at [...]
The market is a very confusing place right now and there are a lot of cross currents to decipher. I spent the afternoon perusing a lot of charts in the hopes of finding some clarity. I do this about once a week - I look at charts everyday but once a week I sit down for several hours and review [...]
More of the same this week. Markets inching higher on low volume. Crude oil spiking. Tensions in the Middle East. The Bank of Japan trying to do too much. The markets do seem overbought right now, but have been for weeks now. Will this correction ever come? The Nasdaq Composite is holding its trend line. The index is overbought, and [...]
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