Federal Reserve

This was me in October: The right narrative here is that the Republicans will lose very badly. And so, expect gridlock, political trench warfare, in the US starting in 2019. That’s going to be a significant factor controlling how well the…

The bear steepening from late August was a head fake. We went from about 18 basis points between the 2- and the 10-year on August 27th to 34 on October 10th. That's when the equities market threw a tizzy as the ten-year reached the 3.25%…

The impression you get from a recent piece in Politico is that, yes, the Trump economy is in for tough sledding ahead: President Donald Trump, already in a grumpy post-midterm mood, faces a growing list of economic problems that could…

The midterm election is over. So we can go back to worrying about the Fed! I ended yesterday's political economy piece saying: My sense, here, is that a divided Congress means we are in a ride it out period economically. There are no more…

I don't have a daily post for you today. So, in lieu of a daily, I wanted to make some more general comments about interest rates that I have been making in my market commentary pieces. The accelerated hike timetable In February, I wrote a…

This morning, I gave you an initial reaction to the jobs number, saying: A bad number won’t change the Fed’s forward guidance because the Fed has a tightening bias. But that bias means that a good number could tip us toward four rate hikes…

Did I ever mention that the South China Morning Post is one of my favorite reads? You're going to see a lot of articles from it into today's daily post because it is a great source for information about China. And today, it had a few tech…

This morning, US stock futures are pointing to triple-digit losses after declines in Europe and in Asia. And the European indices are at a one-year low. There are quite a number of proximate causes for the weakness. But the overriding fear,…

This is how Fed tightening regimes work We're bracing for another big sell off in equities today. I don't know if you saw my piece yesterday on market groups breaking below 50- and 200-day daily moving averages. I said "I don’t have a view…

Back in late February, I told you there was a new hawkish tone coming from the Fed that I believed meant an acceleration of the Fed's rate hike timetable. When Lael Branard got onboard, I knew a regime shift was at hand. This has proved to…