One of the points I’ve been trying to drive home about the recent increase in interest rates has not been so much the amount of increase, but rather the pace. That’s because a slow, orderly rise in interest rates actually would be welcomed by the market. This would be considered…
Last week was obviously all about the Fed, as Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony and the Federal Open Market Committee minutes were taken as “hawkish” by the market, which led to the Wednesday reversal and the first down week for stocks in five. While pundits will debate the minutiae, the real takeaway from the Fed last week was that…
Yesterday was an important day in the markets, and not just because we saw a text book reversal in most major averages. Lost in the analysis was what occurred in the bond market, and I believe it’s critically important that everyone be aware of the changes we’re seeing in that market as a result of the growing Fed “tapering” discussion. Simply put, I think the bond market offers some of the best insight into the direction of equities, and also one of the biggest potential money making trend changes we’ve seen in a long time.
The narrative surrounding the global economy didn’t really change all that much last week, despite the data being pretty disappointing. Domestically, the spike higher in weekly claims to 360k was the biggest disappointment of last week, as the decline claims of the past month was one of the better things going in the economy…
After a strong rally over the past several weeks, WTI Crude has stalled, and on the charts looks like it may have put in another “lower high.”
Last week was very quiet economically speaking, although what little data there was generally beat expectations. The majority of the data last week was internationally focused.
Bubbles are all about the suspension of the proper pricing of risk—and I believe we’re seeing it in the junk market. I’m not saying that junk bonds yields trading below 5% is akin to subprime loans trading where they were in the heights of the real estate bubble, but I’m just pointing out that…
Gold: Since December of last year, the 23 & 30 day moving averages have capped any rally, and they look to be doing so again. $1440 is critical support at this point.
Yesterday was a pretty quiet day in the markets, but one consistent theme that showed up in economic data releases was something we’ve been ahead of the curve on here…
Economic data was almost universally disappointing last week, although it obviously didn’t have the expected effect on the market (more on why below). The big numbers of last week, the global flash PMIs, all either missed expectations (China, U.S. and Germany) or met low expectations and remained…