Published November 11, 2022
For the first time in awhile the usual market suspects of inflation and the Fed’s assault on the stock and bond markets took a backseat for a couple of days. When interest rates rise sharply as they have this year, investors find out who was overly leveraged and caught without a seat in the market’s cakewalk. This week, we found out that cryptocurrency exchange FTX was the latest one without a seat. (more…)
Published July 29, 2022
In a bull market, investors buy the rumor and sell the news, with the selling being typically light. In a bear market like we are in now, this week showed us it is the opposite. Investors fear the news, sell stocks down on the fear, buying them back when the news, though bad, is not quite as terrible as it could be. So it was with the Federal Reserve announcement this week. (more…)
Published May 6, 2022
This week the Fed made the first of their larger interest rate hikes with a 0.5% move (50 bps in bond market parlance). Here’s the path of Fed interest rates that the market foresees – straight up from now through March 2023. (more…)
Published November 5, 2021
A pivotal week for stocks in the near-term as the Federal Reserve (finally!) confirms its plan to begin reducing (aka “tapering”) its portfolio of bonds. This gradual stepping back from active participation in the bond markets is viewed as a first step in the central bank’s path to raising interest rates. (more…)
Published July 2, 2021
Last week we brought you a global outlook from Schwab. This week, we bring a mid-year outlook published by Invesco, the company responsible for the Nasdaq 100 ETF (symbol: QQQ) that our models focus on. Needless to say, Invesco is very positive on the outlook. (more…)
Published June 11, 2021
This week’s inflation report generated plenty of alarming headlines. As the chart below shows, inflation hit its highest point since, well, the end of the last economic crisis. Which points to one of the reasons why the alarming headlines are misleading. (more…)
Published January 24, 2020
One of the oddities of the market so far in 2020 is the decline in interest rates. After rising in the latter half of 2019, interest rates appear to have rolled over and begun heading back down over the past month. While that’s not long enough to declare a trend, the behavior of interest rate sensitive sectors tells us that this is a significant shift. (more…)
Published January 11, 2019
While the market’s swoon in October and December was sparked by concerns of a global economic slowdown and fears that the Federal Reserve would aggressively raise interest rates thus exacerbating the slowdown, there is another worry that played into the selloff. (more…)