September 20, 2018 @ 7:01 pm | Breaking News, Leading Indicators, Volatility |
Today the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both hit record highs. The NASDAQ Composite was up 0.99% as of 2 p.m. New York time. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) advanced 0.95%. West Texas Intermediate crude...
September 19, 2018 @ 6:48 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
Just hours after the Trump administration announced 10% tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese exports, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said the nation wouldn’t devalue its currency in order to make its exports more competitive. Which, of course, doesn’t...
September 13, 2018 @ 7:41 pm | Breaking News, Update, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
The dollar is down today against the euro and some emerging market currencies, such as the Turkish lira, are rallying. The news ostensibly behind the move is some data indicating that U.S. inflation slipped in August. The logic goes that with inflation sliding the...
September 11, 2018 @ 7:37 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
Let’s start with a perhaps less obvious question: Why 60 days? Because that will take us through the historically volatile months of September and October (when fear can beget fear) to the middle of November, which historically tends to mark a turn in the...
September 5, 2018 @ 7:00 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
I think today’s market downturn is nothing more or less than profit taking. It’s not surprising that investors and traders would sell Amazon (AMZN), for example, today (down 2.19%) since the shares were up 11.6% for the past 30 days as of September 4. The...
September 4, 2018 @ 7:33 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
In the Greek debt crisis it was relatively easy to track the exposure of national financial markets and banks to the crisis. The big issue was what non-Greek banks had bought the biggest share of Greek government bonds. In the current emerging market crisis,...
August 31, 2018 @ 6:52 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
The bad news is that the emerging market crisis that has sent financial markets plummeting in Argentina, Turkey, and Brazil has added India and Indonesia to its list of victims. The good news is that the inclusion of India and Indonesia is exactly what analysts and...
August 30, 2018 @ 7:15 pm | Breaking News |
Remember that emerging market crisis that whacked 10% out of the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) between July 31 and August 15–and even produced some anxiety in U.S. markets as the Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 2.1% from August 7 through August...
July 20, 2018 @ 7:53 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
For a second straight day President Donald Trump has tweeted out criticism of the Federal Reserve’s policy decision to raise interest rates. In his tweets today the President wrote: “China, the European Union and others have been manipulating their...
June 7, 2018 @ 7:50 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
If you can’t tell from the cascade of negative commentary, you certainly should be able to tell from trend in share prices: emerging markets have become the focus of current worries about global trade, the effects of a strong dollar, and the potential for a...
May 30, 2018 @ 7:10 pm | Breaking News |
The consensus in financial markets today seems to be that yesterday’s drop on fears that Italy was headed to a crisis that could shake the euro were a bit overstated. This isn’t to say that markets have concluded that the crisis is over–or never...
May 29, 2018 @ 7:20 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down as much at 505 points today–before rallying to a loss of “just” 391 points or 1.6%–on fears that a crisis in Italy could once again put the entire EuroZone project in danger. Italian stocks were down...
March 15, 2018 @ 10:27 pm | Breaking News, Dividend Income Portfolio, Jubak Picks Portfolio, You May Have Missed |
If you spend a significant part of your day staring at your computer to watch the markets, you know that, perplexingly, the traditional safe havens for mitigating portfolio risk haven’t been working very well. For example, gold, which is supposed to go up when...
January 25, 2018 @ 7:33 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
Today somebody in the Trump administration decided that the idea of the world’s biggest debtor nation talking down the value of its currency–as Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin did yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos–might be a bad...
January 25, 2018 @ 7:30 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
The dollar continued its fall this morning after European Central Bank president Marie Draghi voiced minimal concern over the rise in the euro. That currency topped $1.25 for the first time since 2014. The MSCI Emerging Markets Currency Index jumped 0.9%, its biggest...
January 24, 2018 @ 7:05 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin gave the markets a green light to push the U.S. dollar lower in remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Currency traders, already on board the lower-dollar train, didn’t waste time before pushing the throttle. The Dollar...
January 2, 2018 @ 7:13 pm | Breaking News |
As of 12 noon New York time U.S. crude benchmark West Texas Intermediate was off 0.28% but still holding above $60.25 a barrel. International benchmark Brent was off 0.72% but was still holding above $65 at $66.39 a barrel. Prices above $60 are a reflection of market...
October 26, 2017 @ 3:58 pm | Breaking News |
At its meeting today the European Central Bank decided to buy fewer bonds each month but for more months. Monthly purchases will be cut to 30 billion euros ($35 billion) from 60 billion euros beginning in January. But the bank will extend its bond purchases until...
September 27, 2017 @ 6:27 pm | Breaking News |
The financial markets are taking Janet Yellen seriously. In a speech yesterday the Fed chair strongly supported an interest rate increase at the Federal Reserve’s December 13 meeting. Coming along with comments from other Fed governors, the markets have decided...
September 11, 2017 @ 6:59 pm | Breaking News, Buy, GLD, Jubak Picks Portfolio, Volatility |
I’m adding the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) to my Jubak Picks and Volatility portfolios today. Gold has sold off today with worries over a new missile test from North Korea in abeyance. And with traders relieved–and apparently surprised–to discover...
September 7, 2017 @ 7:57 pm | Breaking News, Jubak Picks Portfolio, Update |
At today’s meeting the European Central Bank announced that it would leave interest rates at their current low levels and continue to buy debt assets at the current monthly rate. Â In his post-meeting press conference ECB president Mario Draghi noted that...
August 21, 2017 @ 7:18 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
A very subdued market so far (at 2 p.m. New York time) today. Maybe its the solar eclipse. After all who wants to put on a long position when the sun is about to be eaten by dragons? As of 2 p.m. the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index was up just 0.06%. But...
May 18, 2017 @ 7:45 pm | Breaking News |
So did today’s slight rally put an end to the dangers of a correction? Is buy on the dip still in force? Usually I’d be teasing my post on my paid JubakAM.site here and telling you to subscribe if you want to read all of what I think tomorrow will bring...
May 8, 2017 @ 7:11 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
And now comes the hard part. Centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron trounced far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in Sunday’s vote for president of France. Macron won 66.1% of the vote in the two-person run off. The political and business leaders of France and the...
March 16, 2017 @ 7:44 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
The jump in the price of gold and the even huger spike in the prices of gold mining stocks tells us something really important about how the financial markets see the Federal Reserve’s action and rhetoric on Wednesday, March 15. On Wednesday gold for April...
March 9, 2017 @ 4:46 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
West Texas Intermediate was down 2.74% to $48.90 a barrel today as of noon New York time. International benchmark Brent crude was lower by 2.60% to $51.73 a barrel. The drop in West Texas Intermediate brought the price per barrel below the psychologically important...
March 7, 2017 @ 7:21 pm | Breaking News |
Ahead of Thursday’s meeting of the European Central Bank futures markets have started to raise the odds that the bank will start raising its benchmark deposit interest rate beginning in April 2018. The market was putting the odds of an April increase at 20% last...
March 1, 2017 @ 7:00 pm | Breaking News |
Today, March 1, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index jumped 0.4%. That was a fourth straight daily gain and let the dollar close in on its highest level since January 27. With the dollar climbing, the yen fell 0.8% and the euro dropped 0.3% to $1.055. Yields on the 10-year...
February 24, 2017 @ 6:29 pm | Breaking News |
On Thursday, February 23, President Donald Trump told Reuters that China is guilty of manipulating its currency to lower the price of the yuan in order to make its exports cheaper.“I think they’re grand champions at manipulation of currency. So I haven’t held back....
February 10, 2017 @ 7:09 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
Remember May 2010? That was month of the first Greek debt bailout by the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank. $145 billion over three years. July 2011 saw another bailout. Then there was the October 2011 50% write down of...