August 24, 2021 The strong July jobs report caused a stir in the markets. Most notably, long-term interest rates – which were trending down – reversed course quickly. Was this an indicator that the economy is going to pick up steam from here? It should be noted that the rise in rates did not last […]
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August 10, 2021 The first half of the year the economy came roaring back from the COVID-induced recession. Subject to revision, we had the economy growing at a 6.4% annualized rate and over three million jobs added during the first six months of the year, as well as almost a million added in July. Now many […]
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July 27, 2021 The Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee meets this week and there is little to no chance they will change interest rates. As a matter of fact, it was big news surrounding the previous meeting because they indicated that they will “consider” raising rates as early as 2023. Thus, you would think […]
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June 29, 2021 It seems every year, market analysts come up with a new term to describe the economic scenario. In the 1970’s it was “stagflation” – a mixture of a stagnant economy and elevated inflation. In the 2000’s we had the economic “conundrum” — a diversion in the relationship between lower interest rates and […]
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May 4, 2021 If you are reading the forecasts being released for this year, the optimism for a strong rebound has hit unprecedented highs. There has been plenty of data to support such optimism. This data has included a gain of nearly one million jobs in March. Add plenty of stimulus dollars to the equation, […]
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April 13, 2021 Our previous commentary spoke about the importance of inflation with regard to the future of interest rates. We follow with a discussion regarding the threat of inflation. First, we must understand that all sectors of the economy do not experience inflation at the same rate. For example, today we see inflation in […]
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April 6, 2021 Inflation, inflation, inflation. This year, rates have been headed up and we keep hearing this word being uttered again and again. Rates have been rising because there is an elevated threat of inflation. The question is – why are these two concepts linked together so often? Today, we would like to reintroduce […]
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March 30, 2021 The markets are famous for reacting to what they think is going to happen, rather than what happened in the past. In this regard the markets are an indicator of the future. Like any indicator, the markets are not always accurate, but they are an indicator that bears watching. For example, for […]
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March 23, 2021 Well, the issue of additional stimulus is resolved. We keep hearing the term “trillion” being bantered about. How much is a trillion dollars? A trillion dollars is a million dollars multiplied by a million. Or if you prefer, a thousand billion. It has 12 zeroes: $1,000,000,000,000. That is a lot of zeros. […]
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