What, Me Worry?

What, Me Worry? The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) held their meeting this week and as usual, it created some wild swings on Wall Street. What caused the ruckus this time was a market that had been leaning toward fewer and fewer rates cuts and some early chatter about maybe the next move had to […]
READ POST

Lower is the New Higher

Lower is the New Higher A funny thing happened on the way to lower rates… Fed projections went up, not down. Wall Street was focused on the Fed’s median for 2024 projection, which was unchanged at three 0.25% rate cuts this year. But the economic gurus at the Fed took away one rate cut in […]
READ POST

Gold is Money, Everything Else is Credit.

Gold is Money, Everything Else is Credit. Gold’s traditional role in portfolios is as a haven in times of stress or perceived high risk on a shorter-term basis and longer term as an insurance policy against a decline in the value of the dollar. Gold’s recent run is interesting because it has come in the […]
READ POST

Bitcoin is Back, With a Vengeance

Bitcoin is Back, With a Vengeance Bitcoin, the ‘nothing’ asset is back, and it continues to rally after a strong 2023, but still not quite at all-time highs. Many are focusing on this rally to argue for bitcoin as a legitimate asset, but there are better reasons for that consideration. Bitcoin is often promoted as […]
READ POST

The Elephant in the Room

The Elephant in the Room We have long held that the Fed has been the dominant force in both the stock and bond markets. Rates going down? Then markets are moving up, and vice versa. That has generally been true since the recovery started in 2009. More recently, the Fed has taken a back seat. […]
READ POST

Confused Yet?

Confused yet? It was a week of inconsistencies. Inflation has been down; now CPI and PPI are up. Retail sales were strong; now they are weak. Manufacturing PMIs are up; Industrial production is down. Lay-off announcements are up; initial jobless claims are down. For a data dependent Fed trying to time interest rate reductions, the […]
READ POST

Tug of War

Tug of War The stock market rally continued this week, but in between there was a lot of up and down action. The S&P 500 Index fell 1.6% on Wednesday, but still managed to gain 1.4% for the week as the market eventually managed to ignore the Fed’s rate cut delay. The yield on the […]
READ POST