The FOMC met last week and did what everyone expected them to do - raised the Fed Funds rate by 0.75%. The bond and stock markets reacted not to this action but to the commentary provided by the committee in its statement and by Chairman Jerome Powell at his post meeting press conference. The former had a new phrase, a [...]
Goodbye and good riddance to the third quarter of 2022. That was one of the wildest 3 months I've experienced in my 40 years of trading and investing. The quarter started off great with the S&P 500 rising 14% from July 1 to August 16 but ended with a 17% swan dive into the end of the quarter. And we [...]
Inevitable adjective incapable of being avoided or evaded I heard that word a lot last week. There is now a fully formed consensus that the US, and indeed the world, now faces an inevitable recession. It can't be avoided. Central banks will have to keep hiking rates because that's the only way to kill inflation. Yes, the inflation is due [...]
Well, that didn't last long. I wrote last week about the inversion of the 10-year/2-year term spread as the yield of the 2-year Treasury note rose above the yield of the 10-year Treasury note. Using end-of-day data, the curve inverted on Friday, April 1st, and stayed that way until....Monday, April 4th. The spread closed last Friday, April 8th at 19 [...]
Here we go again. Or maybe, more accurately, here we go still. COVID has reared its ugly head again, this time in the form of a new variant called Omicron. The name surprised some folks because the next letter in the Greek alphabet was Nu, but the WHO thought that sounded too much like "new" so they skipped that one, [...]
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 [...]
April 15th was the two-week anniversary of the day my wife and I got our second Moderna shot. We have spent the last 13 months being very careful about the virus, limiting our contacts, social distancing, and generally doing anything that seemed helpful. I am certainly aware that others took a more liberal attitude as is their right. But, for [...]
The risk budget this month shifts slightly as we add cash to the portfolio. For the moderate risk investor the allocation to bonds is unchanged at 50%, risk assets are reduced to 45% and cash is raised to 5%. The changes this month are modest and may prove temporary but I felt a move to reduce risk was prudent given [...]
There is no change to the risk budget this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between risk assets and bonds is unchanged at 50/50. There are, however, changes within the asset classes. We are reducing the equity allocation and raising the allocation to REITs. Based on the bond markets there has been little change in the growth and [...]
There is no change to the risk budget this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between risk assets and bonds is unchanged at 50/50. The Fed spent the last month forward guiding the market to the rate hike they implemented today. Interest rates, real and nominal, moved up in anticipation of a more aggressive Fed rate hiking cycle. [...]
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