The Die is Likely Cast
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 […]
Read MoreJobs Data To Influence the Fed?
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, […]
Read MoreHopping August
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 […]
Read MoreChristmas in August
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 […]
Read MoreThe China Syndrome
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 […]
Read MoreThe Aftermath
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 […]
Read MoreBusy Week
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 […]
Read MoreHere Comes The Fed and Jobs
July 30, 2019 What is happening with the job market? That is a question we have not had to answer for several years because job growth has been consistently positive. And though the job market continues to be strong in 2019, we can no longer use the word consistent from month-to-month. Since January we have […]
Read MoreYes They Were Wrong
April 16, 2019 At the first of the year we published a range of forecasts. This included the predictions for interest rates in 2019. These predictions were summarized by MarketWatch — For 2019, Market Watch reviewed the predictions of rates on home loans by several major economists. The range was an annual average of between 4.8% to 5.3% […]
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