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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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October 26, 2023
Investors have been in love with TINA on and off for fifteen years, ever since the Federal Reserve first dropped short-term interest rates to zero in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis and then again in 2020 in response to COVID. TINA, an acronym for There Is No Alternative (to stocks),...
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October 2, 2023
As expected in mid-September the captain and crew of the good ship USS FOMC (Federal OpenMarket Committee) agreed to hold the fed funds rate on an even keel of 5.25%-5.50%. However, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell surprised markets by suggesting interest rates will not be falling as much or as fast as...