December 13, 2022 Throughout the pandemic, there was little interest in Fed watching. The Federal Reserve took short-term rates down to zero and kept them there for two years. Now we are accustomed to the Fed raising short-term rates at each meeting for the past eight months. And while the markets believe the meeting this […]
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December 6, 2022Just about one month ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for October and it was like a breath of fresh air. Really, the bad inflation news we have experienced since the beginning of this year was suffocating to say the least. And then we received a report […]
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November 15, 2022 We used to be glued to the jobs report. Every month the analysts made predictions and then analyzed where they got things wrong. Then there is the quarterly growth data (GDP). Together with the jobs report, the markets reacted until the next set of numbers were released. Now we have another focus, […]
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November 8, 2022 We must sound like a broken record. The Federal Reserve meets. The Fed raises short-term rates. The Fed says — we are going to raise rates until inflation gets under control. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. This was the sixth time the Fed raised their benchmark rates this year, with the most recent four […]
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November 1, 2022 This will be another interesting week for the markets. The Fed starts their meeting as we publish this newsletter. All month long we have been subject to incendiary rhetoric from the members of the Fed indicating that they will not rest in their fight to subdue inflation. In other words, short-term rates […]
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October 18, 2022 All this focus on the jobs report, the Federal Reserve raising rates and other economic reports, sometimes has us putting blinders on. Then something happens that makes us realize that we are not alone in the world. Perhaps it is the pandemic or the war in Ukraine. The bottom line is that […]
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October 11, 2022 For months we have been predicting job growth would slow down. This prediction was not only predicated on the forecasts for the economy to slow down, but also because we have now recovered the jobs lost during the pandemic-reduced recession. From here on out, job growth will be a factor of the […]
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September 27, 2022 Well, the Federal Reserve raised short-term rates by 0.75%. This was not a surprise, as predictions for a 0.75% increase had been circulating for more than a month. And there were so many speeches and statements by Fed members delivering tough talk about how they were going to stay the course against […]
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September 20, 2022 For more than the past month, the members of the Federal Reserve Board have been talking tough against inflation. This talk has caused long-term rates to rise in anticipation of Fed activity in the coming months. Statements such as “raising rates and keeping them high as long as it takes until inflation […]
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September 13, 2022 Since we could not decide as to whether we are in a recession right now, many have adopted the term “housing recession” instead. While we are not sure what constitutes a housing recession, we really need to view today’s real estate market in terms of where the market is coming from. Certainly, […]
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