Market Hopes: An Easy Fed; End Of Trade Wars. So Far, Neither One Has Happened.
The “expected” scenario, a resumption of trade talks, is what emerged from the G20 meetings. The best the agreement between Presidents Trump and Xi did was to temporarily reduce the specter of further growth killing tariffs. We still have the existing ones that have significantly slowed world trade, created a “soft patch” in the U.S.’s […]
“Pause” Gave the Market Temporary Hope But Hope is not a Good Investment Strategy
The Dow Jones Average rose 618 points on November 28th as the market interpreted Fed Chair Powell’s speech as dovish and has assumed that the Fed will “pause” in its stated rate hiking plan. Then, on December 3rd, the Dow rose another 288 points, interpreting the 90 day “cease fire trade pause” between the U.S. […]
New Market Highs: It’s Not the Economy (Stupid)!
It had been 210 days since the S&P 500 had made a new record high, but, on Friday, August 24th, after several days of struggle, the market finally broke to a new high (2874.69). The struggle actually began the prior Tuesday (August 21st). During that trading day, the S&P 500 actually pierced the old record […]
Fed Likely to Put Economy at Risk
Market volatility finally showed up in the popular indexes (DJIA, S&P 500, NASDAQ). These were down two weeks in a row as of November 17 on rising volume (never a good sign when markets are falling), and they are no higher than they were a month earlier (October 20). The VIX, a measure of market […]