March 17, 2020 This week’s meeting of the Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee could be pretty exciting, or it could be something of a wash-out. Since the Fed decided to lower rates before the meeting took place and add a bond-buying program to inject liquidity into the markets, there may be no further action […]
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March 10, 2020 Even before we saw the jobs report, the Federal Reserve decided to step in with an “emergency” rate cut in response to the coronavirus crisis before their next scheduled meeting. Even though we have not seen many negative reports on the economy, the Fed saw what was on the horizon. The only […]
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March 3, 2020 Last week we asked why rates were so low. The question arises because the economy seems to be humming along quite nicely. Sure, there are headwinds. The latest headwind is the threat of the coronavirus. Not to play down this threat, but in the past several years the economy has withstood plenty […]
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February 25, 2020 This week we ponder an interesting question. At the beginning of last year, rates were headed higher and we were not supposed to see low rates again for quite some time. Of course, the market analysts were wrong, and rates fell as 2019 progressed. We kept hearing of the threat of recession […]
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February 18, 2020 There have been plenty of headlines in 2020 and it is only mid-February. The virus scare has died down a bit in the markets, though this is no indication that the threat of the virus has gone away. It just seems that these events can only hold the attention of the markets […]
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February 11, 2020 The January 2020 jobs report released on Friday actually represented the first major data of the new year and new decade. It also came just about one week after our first look at economic growth for the fourth quarter. The preliminary 2.1% growth rate was seen as right on target. Adding 225,000 […]
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February 4, 2020 Just when we think we have enough factors to consider when analyzing the direction of the markets, we add just one more. At the end of January, we had the meeting of the Fed Reserve, a release of the measure of growth for the fourth quarter, and an Impeachment trial. Then we […]
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January 28, 2020 Don’t look now, but it is coming. We constantly warn that predictions are often fruitless. But one thing is guaranteed, we will have a Presidential election this year. While we can give you the date, we obviously can’t guarantee the winner. Though we can’t guarantee who will say what, we can guarantee […]
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January 21, 2020 We spent the past few weeks presenting for you summaries of 2019 and predictions for 2020. Then, as we do every year, there is an event that reminds us that predicting the future is impossible. This year it is the Middle East which is getting all the attention. In previous years, the […]
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January 14, 2020 The numbers are in for 2019. We will start with jobs, as the December report was just released last week. The month’s numbers generally were slightly disappointing, which is good news for the economy and interest rates, as it is in line with predictions of slower growth but no recession. For the […]
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