|
July 5, 2024
Almost a year ago on July 26, 2023, the Federal Reserve raised the fed funds rate for the 11th and what many believe to be the last time in the current credit tightening cycle. Beginning in March 2022, short-term rates rose from 0.00% to 5.50%, culminating in one of the fastest rate-increases of...
|
May 22, 2024
When the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed above 40,000 recently it reminded me of an incident from years ago. Sometime in the mid-1990s I had the pleasure of speaking to the Rotary Club of McComb, a large and attentive group. The DJIA, a collection of 30 industry leading companies, had...
|
April 9, 2024
An overriding focus for the past several months has been how soon, how often, and how much the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates after pausing its monetary tightening campaign. The Fed began aggressively raising the Fed Funds rate 11 times beginning in March 2022 from 0.00% - 0.25% to the...
|
January 2, 2024
2023 proved to be as good a year for equities as 2022 was bad, even better. After last year’s rotten egg, this year’s gains were quite a pleasant surprise, especially given early-on negative consumer and investor sentiment, a banking crisis, two wars, falling earnings, and multi-decade high...
|
December 27, 2023
While the Federal Reserve has not yet declared victory in its fight to bring inflation back to its 2% target, recent data suggests we may already be there. This past Friday’s report of the Fed’s favorite inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index revealed year-over-year...
|
November 15, 2023
This year’s outsized performance by the S&P 500, a popular large-company index, is currently being driven by just a handful of companies commonly referred to as the Magnificent Seven, which includes Apple, Amazon, Meta Platforms (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Tesla, and Nvidia. These...