Top News Headlines October best month for stocks in four years. Valeant troubles continue. Pfizer, Allergan consider merger. Earnings, earnings, earnings. CNBC botches Republican debate. Debt deal reached between President and Republicans. Economic News Fed leaves rates unchanged; statement points to December hike. Yeah, right. BOJ leaves QE program as is. GDP disappoints at 1.5% for 3rd quarter. New and [...]
Stocks rallied strongly last week in response to comments by Mario Draghi that signaled a willingness, a determination in fact, to engage in more monetary stimulus. In fact, Draghi seemed to promise - once again - to do "whatever it takes", offering to consider "a whole menu of monetary policy instruments" in saying that the ECB was now "vigilant". One [...]
Top News Headlines Paul Ryan running for Speaker of the House. Old tech blows out earnings estimates; GOOGL, AMZN and MSFT lead the way. Huge hurricane heads for Mexico. Hillary testifies, Republicans look stupid.....again. Mets sweep the Cubs; my friend Jim sighs. Economic News ECB hints at more QE; stocks soar. China cuts interest rates and reserve requirements; stocks soar. [...]
Stocks rallied again last week, up a bit less than 1% as weak economic data pushed out - again - expectations for the first Fed rate hike to March of next year. I suspect this won't be the last week that sees that time line extended although whether that translates to higher stock prices is more questionable. In looking through [...]
Top News Headlines Hillary debates aging hippie Sanders and some other guy. Dell to buy EMC in biggest tech deal ever, assuming bond market is agreeable. Walmart earnings take a dive, stock follows. Gold turns positive for the year. Economic News China trade figures disappoint. US PPI and CPI both negative on the month. Inflation? What inflation? Retail sales up [...]
It has certainly been much calmer in October so far, especially compared with the deep deviations following the FOMC’s lack of activity. Stocks have rallied since October 1 along with many commodities, especially crude. Currencies have been almost mellow, with the ruble following oil prices upward, the real departing (for now) from its devastation and even those like the Indian [...]
Asset markets on Friday reversed course after fully digesting a payroll report that has been universally assailed. The thinking is, apparently, that the Fed will have no choice but to stay on the sidelines now. That view is certainly bolstered by the FOMC’s inaction already in September, so worsening economic fortunes in the US apparently removes any flexibility anytime soon. [...]
An interesting side benefit of the Fed having pegged interest rates effectively to zero and having accomplished so little with QE, is that we get to see markets' self-correcting tendency. Consider what has happened over the last year or so since the Fed made it clear their goal was to start normalizing policy, i.e. raise interest rates. As I've pointed [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard – 9/14/15 to 9/25/15 If you want a good explanation for why the Fed didn't hike interest rates last week, just take a look at all the red in that chart. They might have cited international concerns but the reality is that the US economic data isn't all that robust either. Okay, things aren't as bad as [...]
Well, thank goodness that's over. The Fed met last week and decided to maintain the Fed funds rate in the 0 - 0.25% range in which it has been confined since the great financial crisis of 2008. Of course, the fed funds market is essentially kaput having been usurped by the Fed itself during the crisis so the rate charged [...]
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