Friday’s CPI inflation report making investors nervous
Want to debate which is putting more pressure on stocks, higher oil prices because of the Iran war or fears that Friday’s CPI inflation report will push the Federal Reserve into hikng interest rates? Today Brent crude settled around $98 a barrel, and kept climbing...
Noise and narrative in Friday’s jobs report: What trends count now?
Certainly, the surprisingly strong August job numbers announced on Friday moved the financial markets. But, I would argue, the “news” in those reports were largely noise. And that noise had very little to say about the important narrative trends unfolding in the...
Friday’s jobs report won’t solve Fed interest rate/inflation puzzle
Friday’sjob report for August will be just strong enough and just weak enough to leave the Federal Reserve trapped in its current indecision on interest rates. Economists estimate the monthly employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday will show a...
Wall Street hears higher interest rates in Warsh Jackson Hole speach
Fed chair Kevin Warsh can preach all he wants about wanting to get the Federal reserve out of the “forward guidance” business. But he can’t stop the financial marlets fromtreating his remarks as if they were forward guidance. In his speech this morning at the Fed’s...
When will Treasury buyers demand a Bessent/Warsh “incompetence premium”?
When will Treasury buyers demand a Bessent/Warsh “incompetence premium”? Will buyers of U.S. Treasury bonds start to demand a yield premium to reflect the incompetence of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh? This coming week could...
This isn’t good: Yield at the Treasury’s 30-year auction climbs to 5.216%, highest since 2001
The U.S. government sold 30-year bonds at the highest interest rate in a quarter century, a testament to investors’ demand for greater compensation to finance the nation’s growing deficit. The yield at the $25 billion sale Thursday came in at 5.216%, the most since...
It’s a jobs shock: Economy loses 23,000 jobs in July
Employers cut 23,000 positions on a seasonally adjusted basis last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. The unemployment rate dropped slightly to 4.1% The underlying details were worse than the headlines suggest. Job gains for April and May were revised...Kevin Warsh has a Fed problem: 3 on 1 wasn’t fair and now it looks like it’s 4 against 1
At the last meeting of the Federal Reserve’S Open Market Committee three members of the interest rate setting body voted against the Fed’s decision to hold interest rates steady. Those dissenters wanted to raise interest rates to fight inflation still running...
Ahead of the Fed meeting, 10-year Treasury yields continue to climb
I expect lots of excited speculation about whether or not the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates when it meets on Wednesday, July 29. In the last week the speculation has moved strongly in the direction of a rate increase. The odds of a 25 basis point increase...
Yes, we’re in a momentum market–but this time the momentum is down
I expect this momentum market to continue for at least another week. “Momentum market”? Well, yes. We’re used to talking about momentum markets only when stocks are going up. And investors buy more shares because they think yesterday’s gains will be repeated...
Good news on June CPI inflation–but how long does it last?
American consumers got some inflation relief in June after months of soaring prices. The all-items Consumer Price Index (CPI) was up 3.5% in June from a year earlier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Tuesday. That represented a cool-down from May, when annual...
Yen hits lowest level against the dollar since 1986
The yen slid to touch 161.98 versus the dollar in New York trading on Monday, breaching the 161.95 mark touched in July 2024 during an earlier campaign by Japan to shore up the exchange rate. The last time the yen traded at this level it was barreling in the opposite...
Economy added stronger than expected 172,000 jobs in May
The economy added 172,000 jobs in May, more than economists had expected. The unemployment rate stayed at 4.3%. With revisions, March and April added 93,000 more jobs than previously reported. That puts average job growth in 2026 at about 114,000 per month, much...
Friday’’s jobs report expected to show pick up in hiring
It’s jobs week. On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its labor market report for May. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect that the unemployment rate will hold steady at 4.3% and that the economy generated 89,000. That figure would be higher than...
The Fed looks to be planning for slowly growing inflation–as the only way out of a fiscal disaster
Watch what they do and not what the say is always good advice for investors trying to figure out what’s going on in the financial markets. Sure, the Federal Reserve has said that it has a target of no more than 2% inflation. And Jerome Powell & Co. have professed...
And now bad news is good news? For a day
The U.S. bond market rallied from its deepest selloff in 17 months as traders moved away from a belief that the Federal Reserve would seek to head off an increase in inflation by raising interest rates. Today’s thinking is that the Iran war will produce an economic...
No interest rate move from the Fed today, but there was news
As expected, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee left its benchmark short-term interest rate at 3.50% to 3.75%. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t news from its Dot Plot projections for future GDP growth inflation, and interest rates. First, the Fed...
Will the Fed’s Wednesday Dot Plot move gold?
No secret. The big financial event of the week is the Wednesday, March 18, meeting of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee. But the news out of that meeting will likely NOT be a decision on interest rates themselves. As of Friday, the CME FedWatch Tool was...
The financial markets shrug at the newest attack on the Federal Reserve
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond soared 2 basis points to 4.18% Monday in response to news that Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into Fed chair Jerome Powell over his Congressional testimony on the Fed’s building project. Yep,...
Fed cuts interest rates again at Wednesday’s meeting but reveals no consensus on 2026
The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point Wednesday. But revealed a huge disagreement on the course for 2026. The decision cut interest rates for a third meeting in a row, moving rates to a new range of 3.5% to 3.75%. It marked the...
Here are the stock market movers for the week ahead
Expect something macro and something micro. The macro? The September Jobs Report will be released on Friday morning before the financial markets open. . Economists expect a weak tally of 50,000 job additions and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.3%. With...
I expect BIG DRAMA behind the scenes at today’s Fed meeting
I expect big drama and suspense from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, September 17. Oh, not from the Fed’s decision on interest rates. The Fed Funds Futures market is pricing in a 96% chance that the Fed’s Open Market Committee will cut the benchmark interest rate by...
Powell in Jackson Hole tells the financial markets what they wanted to hear
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell carefully opened the door to an interest-rate cut in September, pointing to rising risks for the labor market even as worries over inflation remain. “The stability of the unemployment rate and other labor market measures allows us...
Wait, you mean there might not be a September interest rate cut?
Ahead of Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s Friday speech at the central bankers’ conclave in Jackson Hole, four (and counting) Fed governors spoke up to cast doubt on the inevitability of a 25 basis point interest rate cut at the Fed’s September 17 meeting. Odds...
Rate cut hopes return to the market
Hope of multiple unrest rate cuts in 2025 is back. Today, June 24, money markets were again pricing in two Fed reductions by the end of the year and giving a 25% chance to a third cut. The reason for the return of rate cut optimism? A second Federal Reserve official,...
Good PCE inflation report; but tariff, spending uncertainty postpones any Fed rate cut
The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, the inflation measure favored by the Federal Reserve, posted a lower-than-expected increase in April, rising 2.1% from year-ago levels. Economists had forecast that the PCE index would rise 2.2%. The core PCE, the...
Please watch my new YouTube video: No Powell Put…Yet
Today’s Video: No Powell Put…Yet. The market is betting on the Fed riding to the rescue with rate cuts, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon. The Fed’s job is controlling inflation and employment—not propping up stocks. Even with recent market jitters, the...
Please watch my new YouTube video: Why the Fed is almost certain to be wrong
Today’s video is Why the Fed is Almost Certain to be Wrong. Blame it in lags. Lags make economic forecasting really difficult at the best of times. How long does it take policies like tariffs and tax cuts to actually affect the economy and show up in the data?...
Bad inflation news is worse than expected
The Commerce Department reported this morning that the core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, that is after stripping out volatile food and energy prices, climbed 2.8% in February from a year earlier. That was a faster pace than in January. On a monthly...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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