April 23, 2019 Last week we spoke about how wrong the prognosticators were when they said interest rates were going up this year. Lower rates typically represent good news for consumers. But lower rates when we were expecting the worst actually translates into great news for consumers. And there is evidence that consumers are noticing […]
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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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April 9, 2019 A few weeks ago, we had a one-day precipitous drop in the stock market which was blamed on the appearance of an inverted yield curve, which for some analysts signals that a recession can be on the horizon. This begs two questions. First, what is an inverted yield curve? Simply, an inversion […]
Read MoreMarch 19, 2019 A bit over one week after the February jobs report, the Federal Reserve Board convenes today to determine the present and future of monetary policy. As far as the analysts are concerned, there is not much concern about the present. There is no action expected to be announced with regard to the […]
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February 26, 2019 This is not a leap year, so February is a very short month. It seems like it just started, but February is ending in two days. For most of us dealing with snow and cold, we are pretty happy to be saying goodbye to February. Government workers are especially happy as they […]
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January 29, 2019 Tomorrow the Federal Reserve Board releases their decision on rates after their first meeting of 2019. Based upon comments made by members after their increase in December, there is little possibility of another increase in January and only a slightly greater possibility during their next meeting in March. The comments continually talked […]
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January 8, 2019 Actually, the data is from 2018, but it is the most significant data thus far released in 2019. On Friday, the jobs numbers showed the addition of 312,000 jobs last month, more than making up for a miss the previous month. In addition, the previous two months’ numbers were revised upward by […]
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January 1, 2019 It is officially 2019! Every year high-paid economists come out with their predictions for a host of economic indicators, from economic growth to the pace of inflation. It is always interesting to look at these in hind sight, especially when forecasting the direction of interest rates. It seems that just about every […]
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November 13, 2018 Though we are not in the business of predicting the future, it is sometimes very interesting to go back and see how forecasts play out after the fact. Especially when there is a lot of news happening during a short period of time. First, we had the jobs report released on November […]
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October 23, 2018 For the first time in several years, the real estate market is a lagging part of the economy. For some time, the real estate market has led the economy forward, but in the past year or so, the economy has outshined the real estate sector. In most times a stronger economy helps […]
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