The bar was set pretty high for the BOJ coming into yesterday’s meeting. Investors were expecting a lot of additional monetary easing, but seeing as the yen had already declined significantly, most assumed that the “dovish” results of the meeting were priced in. They were wrong.
Stocks suffered their first weekly decline of 2013 last week as concerns about central bankers maintaining extraordinary accommodation and the pace of global economic growth weighted on stocks. The S&P de-clined .4% last week and is up 6.27% year to date.
Interestingly, the Dow was a big outperformer on the day (up .76%), and usually when that happens there is one stock that is up several percentage points that skews the average. Interestingly, that was not the case on Monday, as the strength in the Dow was evenly spread across many of the index components (TRV, […]
I was watching the coverage of the Republican primary results on Tuesday night, and as I was channel surfing I came across Bill O’Reilly’s talking points memo with which he opens each show. I have mixed emotions about Mr. O’Reilly—his understanding of markets and economics leaves something be desired, but generally speaking his talking […]
The bottom line of the minutes from The Fed’s March meeting was that there is little probability of the Fed doing any additional stimulus unless the economic data weakens. In particular, this is the sentence that got markets moving: “A couple of members indicated that the initiation of additional stimulus could become necessary if […]
The market took this speech as dovish, and expectations for QE3 rose slightly. I, however, don’t particularly find the comments “dovish.” Anyone who knows to watch the average work week component in the monthly jobs data knows that we’re not seeing additional hiring because of expanding economic conditions. Bernanke, in my opinion, just said out […]
As you probably know, the banking sector has been one of the best performing of the year (up 28% year to date). I think it’s safe to say that the banks have probably become a bit overbought here, and that a correction of some sort is due. So, if you’re not already long the banks, […]
While everyone was focused on equities yesterday, I think the most important market movements we saw yesterday came from the 10 and 30 year treasuries. It looks at though 10 and 30 year yields have finally, after months, broken out to the upside. As I’ve said repeatedly, getting long yields is going to be one […]
The net/net of Thursday’s news on Greece is that the Greek government has agreed to the troika’s austerity demands. However, the European financial ministers now say the deal isn’t done, and that there won’t be a formal announcement this week. The best way to keep an eye on this theatre of the absurd is to […]
Just when you thought it was safe to finally stop paying attention to Athens, we have a pretty important event occurring on Thursday of this week with regards to the Greek bailout. Thursday is the day that private Greek bond holders have to agree to exchange their current bonds for longer dated bonds with lower […]