October 8, 2019 With so many headlines using the terms impeachment and trade wars, we can often overlook the mundane release of economic data indicating to us how consumers seem to be weathering these political and international skirmishes. Thus far the economy seems to be holding up well with so many distractions going on. Yet […]
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October 1, 2019 We are now three-quarters of the way through the year. We ended the quarter with an important reminder with regard to the markets. Simply put — you can’t predict the future. Take interest rates. Everyone was convinced that rates were going to continue to rise this year. Yet for most of the […]
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The Federal Reserve Board is meeting this week with an announcement to be made on Wednesday. Many times, there is a lot of drama and speculation surrounding these meetings. We believe the die will likely have been cast before the meeting happened. The markets truly believe that the Fed must lower short-term interest rates. After […]
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September 10, 2019 The data is in and it looks like the Federal Reserve Board will likely lower rates again next week, as market analysts have predicted. There was plenty of data released in the past two weeks. First, we saw a revision of the estimate of the second quarter’s economic growth. While not final, […]
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September 3, 2019 August is over and done with. But we can say it was not the usual, “dog days of summer” August. Usually everyone is on vacation in August and the markets go through a lull. But this August there was plenty of fireworks. The stock market was extremely volatile with violent swings in […]
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August 27, 2019 With the Chinese/American trade war carrying over, the markets were encouraged for at least a period of time with the Administration’s decision to delay additional tariffs on certain goods until December 15. This decision was announced so that consumers were not hurt during the Christmas shopping season. Apparently, the season is ending […]
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August 20, 2019 We will file this commentary under the subject heading of — you can’t predict the future, especially in a world economy. First we had a solid but unspectacular report of economic growth for the second quarter. Then we had a solid but unspectacular jobs report. In between, the Federal Reserve Board’s Open […]
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August 13, 2019 It was the week of the “Feds,” as not only did our Federal Reserve Board lower rates by .25% last week, but also other Central Banks around the world weighed in. The Bank of Japan and Bank of England both kept their already low interest rates steady, one week after the European […]
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August 6, 2019 The first week in August was a block buster in terms of economic news. First, we had a reading on personal income and spending for the month of June. This report showed that consumers were still spending, but at a lower rate compared to the previous few months. This was the last […]
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