The Real Story Of Employment Data
There were two separate events of economic significance the week ended September 5th. First, the financial markets displayed volatility that hasn’t been seen for several months. The S&P 500 began the week at 3,508, rose 2.5% to 3,587 on Wednesday, fell -3.7% to 3,455 on Thursday, and after falling to an intraday low of 3,374 […]
The Recession Has Arrived, & with a Vengeance
For some time, I have outlined the growing softness in the U.S. and world economies. Most of the recent data is pre-virus, and are generally meaningless. The numbers we will get for March will be awful, but the worst is yet to come. An example of March’s data is from the Philly Fed. The print […]
The “Avoidance” Reaction
Preamble I received an email from my travel agent last Monday (March 2) informing me that, because Italy had been raised to a Travel Level 3 by the CDC (strongly advised not to travel there), our vacation to Italy (March 12-22) had to be postponed, else we risked being quarantined upon our return. In addition, […]
The ‘Insurance’ Cut Worry
Fed Chair Powell’s congressional testimony did little to allay market fears regarding the Fed’s underlying posture. Markets continue to be worried that, while the Fed is certain to cut the Fed Funds rate by 25 bps at July’s meeting, the rate reduction may turn out to be just an “insurance” cut, especially in light of […]
Markets Have Recovered, But Charts Look Like Niagara Falls
In January, the equities markets bounced from significantly oversold conditions at the end of December, on the hopes that a) the Fed stopped it tightening cycle in time, and b) the halt to the government shut-down occurred in time to avoid negative Q1 GDP growth. As I have stated in prior blogs, “hope” is not […]
Caution: Markets Are Forward Looking
This is the time of year to take stock of where the economy and markets stand and try to figure out what lies ahead. Markets are telling us something, and so is the underlying data. In what follows I will try to parse the signals the markets are sending, look at the data and the […]