The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial stock averages made new all-time highs last week as bonds sold off, the 10-year Treasury note yield briefly breaking above 1.7% before a pretty good-sized rally Friday brought the yield back to 1.65%. And thus we're right back where we were at the end of March when the 10-year yield hit its high [...]
The Fed meets this week and is widely expected to say that it is talking about maybe reducing bond purchases sometime later this year or maybe next year or at least, someday. Jerome Powell will hold a press conference at which he'll tell us that markets have nothing to worry about because even if they taper QE, interest rates aren't [...]
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. George Orwell, 1984 I have said many times and believe deeply that our job as investors is not to predict the future but merely to interpret the present as accurately as we can. I've also said and believe deeply that doing [...]
I thought of Gilda Radner this past week. Actually, I thought of a character she created on the original Saturday Night Live, Emily Litella, who was a regular on the Weekend Update segment. She'd start to rant about something topical, getting it completely wrong at which point Jane Curtin or Chevy Chase would explain it to her and she'd respond. [...]
It was hard not to hear about cryptocurrencies last week what with the bear market and all. Actually, you can make the case that bitcoin has had two bear markets since mid-April. There was a 27% decline followed by a 27% rally, followed by last week's rout. From its intraday peak in April to its intraday low last week, bitcoin [...]
It was all over the news last week. Inflation has arrived. The CPI was hotter than expected. The PPI was even hotter. Import prices were up and export prices were up more. It was impossible to miss the inflation story last week. Stocks got the message and sold off on the hot CPI and finished the week lower for a [...]
There's an old saying on Wall Street that one should "buy the rumor, sell the news", a pithy way to express the efficient market theorem. By the time an event arrives, whatever it may be, the market will have fully digested the news and incorporated it into current prices. And then the market will move on to anticipating the next [...]
This is a holiday-shortened week in the US but there is some important data on tap. Retail sales are expected to show a month-to-month rise for the first time since September. Year-over-year numbers remain pretty subdued and likely will until life returns to something resembling normal. Producer prices will likely rise but inflation continues its benign ways. It is likely [...]
It’s only a confusing when you just accept the booming economy of the unemployment rate. From this perspective, 2018 was, and more so 2019 is, a downright conundrum. By all mainstream accounts, this just shouldn’t be happening. Home sales are running at a pace similar to 2015 levels – even with exceptionally low mortgage rates, a record number of jobs [...]
In the world of assets classes, I don’t believe it is equities which hold the Federal Reserve’s attention. After the 2006-11 debacle, the big bust, you can at least understand why policymakers might be more attuned to real estate no matter how the NYSE trades. It may be a decade ago, but that’s the one thing out of the Global [...]
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