May 8, 2018 If you were looking at the market’s actions heading into a busy first week of May, you would have predicted that the Federal Reserve was going to raise interest rates and we were going to get a “bounce-back” jobs report. Interest rates started rising about two weeks before the Fed was scheduled […]
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May 1, 2018 The jobs report is the most intensely watched of all monthly economic releases. As far as events are concerned, meetings of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) stand as one of the most important events as well. To have them both happen in the same week is somewhat of an […]
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April 17, 2018 In the first three weeks of the year, the stock market experienced gains that were nothing short of spectacular, extending a great year for equities in 2017. Starting with the last week in January, the markets have been experiencing extreme amounts of volatility — both up and down. It has not been unusual […]
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April 10, 2018 The job numbers for March give us another indication of where our economy is headed in the short-term. The headline numbers showed 103,000 jobs added and an unemployment rate of 4.1%. While the number of jobs added was disappointing, the report followed a very high number of jobs added for the previous […]
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April 3, 2018 Now that April’s Fools Day has passed, we can get down to some serious business. And the first order of business each month is the release of the employment report. Each report seems to have a special meaning with regard to the economy, and this month the job numbers will be no […]
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March 27, 2018 Like the first two months of the year, March has been a very interesting month. From an economic perspective, the two “headline” events included a very strong employment report and the Federal Reserve Board announcing that they were raising rates for the fifth time in just over two years. And while these […]
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March 20, 2018 The Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee meets today and tomorrow. While the vast majority of the world will be going about their business, thousands of financial analysts will be on the edge of their seats trying to determine what the Fed’s direction will be. Like all Americans, they are concerned that […]
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March 13, 2018 The wild year has continued with regard to volatility in the markets, political headlines and, sadly, national tragedies. Through it all, we have seen three patterns emerge. First, the volatility has been focused mostly in the stock and bond markets. Stock gains were some of the strongest in memory in January and […]
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March 6, 2018 The minutes of the Federal Reserve’s January meeting were released the week before last. These minutes indicated that the Fed is comfortable that an expansion with “substantial underlying economic momentum” could sustain additional increases in interest rates this year. This statement was of no surprise to the markets, as rates have been […]
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