Nothing in the Federal Reserve minutes released today to pause financial markets.
Nothing to see here. Move along. In the minutes from its March 16-17 meeting, released today April 7, Federal Reserve officials told the financial markets “that it would likely be some time until substantial further progress toward the [Open Market] Committee’s...
Bond traders speculate that the bond “lull” won’t last long–and that yields will spike again
Today April 6 the yield on the 10-year Treasury is down again–to 1.65%, a drop of 5 basis points. After looking like it was on a short path to breaking 1.90% and threatening 2.00%, the yield on the 10-year Treasury has been stuck in a range of 1.60% to 1.70%....
Market squares positions ahead of weekend, but doesn’t quite make up for yesterday’s losses as trend remains to the downside
The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed down 0.06% today, March 19. About as exciting as watching paint dry. The NASDAQ Composite, down yesterday, reversed that drop and a little bit more by adding 0.76%. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), down 1.84%...
I almost forgot…the Federal Reserve meets on Wednesday
With everything going on, it’s easy to forget about the upcoming meeting of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate setting body, the Open Market Committee, on Wednesday. Which would be a mistake because, in my opinion, nothing is more important than interest...
The rotation gets extreme–Dow hits record intraday high while NASDAQ Composite falls into a correction
Two indexes will tell you what you need to know about today’s stock market action. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, driven by cyclicals, vaccine recovery stocks, and consumer stocks rose to an intraday record high. After a slight retreat at the end of the...
Don’t expect too much movement from stocks in the next couple of days–there’s just too much news due on Thursday and Friday
Stocks are neither moving ahead to follow up on yesterday’s big gains. Nor selling off under the wave of profit taking. Given the news calendar on Thursday and Friday that’s about what I’d expect. We’re due for a bushel of potentially...
Bond rally holds; stocks close on strong note
Treasury yields ended the day slightly lower (which means prices were slightly higher) than earlier in the day. The 5-year Treasury note, for example, ended with a yield of 0.69% after trading with a yield of 0.72% earlier in the day. (The low yield for the day was...
Stocks bounce back as bond prices take a breather and yields fall slightly
As of 2 p.m. New York Time today, March 1, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 2.57% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was higher by 2.30%. The NASDAQ Composite had climbed 2.80% and the NASDAQ 100 had gained 2.83%. The small cap Russell 2000 had added...
10-year Treasury yield hits 1.61%–bond market moves now driving stock prices
Yields on U.S. Treasuries hit 1.61% early today before pulling back slightly to 1.51% as of 3 p.m. New York time. It’s not just the rise in yields or even the magnitude of the increase that has so disconcerted the bond market today, February 25. It’s the...
Watch my new YouTube video: “Avoiding Di-Worsification in 2021”
I’m starting up my videos–this time using YouTube as a platform. The tenth YouTube video “Avoiding Di-Worisification in 2021” went up today. Please watch and subscribe to my YouTube channel. And like my video. You can see it...
Yield on 10-year Treasury climbs to 1.16%–time to rethink some bond market assumptions and to start some selling
A year ago, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note stood at 1.59%. From that point yields fell, leading to big gains for Treasuries and other bonds. (The Shares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF) gained 10.01% in 2020, for example.) Yields were down to 0.73% as of the...
Yields on the 10-year Treasury pull back a bit in today’s auction
For a day, at least, the seemingly inexorable climb in Treasury yields stopped. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which is up 23 basis points in the last month, dropped back to 1.13%, a retreat of 2 basis points. (It takes 100 basis points to make up one percentage...
Inflation worries? You’ve got to be kidding but bond market starts to price in higher interest rates
The stock market is in the midst of euphoria at the prospect that unified Democratic control of the White House and Congress will mean more fiscal stimulus–those $2,000 checks for a start–increased aid to cities, and increased spending (maybe) on...
Federal Reserve puts its corporate-bond-buying vehicle in motion
On March 23, the Federal Reserve announced that it would create a facility to buy corporate bunds and ETFs tracking the corporate bond market. That facility remained an all-talk/no-action vehicle until today when the New York Federal Reserve Bank announced that its...
Another reason stocks are rallying? A belief in negative interest rates by early 2021
The Fed funds futures market, which trades bets on where the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rates are headed, has rallied this week to send prices for futures contracts in early 2021 above 100. Above 100 traders are pricing in negative interest rates from...
Treasury to borrow $3 trillion during April to June quarter
Okay, the Treasury actually will need to borrow only $2.99 trillion, but close enough, no? It will still be a record. The previous record for borrowing in a single quarter was $530 billion in the July to September 2008 quarter in the fallout from the global financial...
Let’s hear it for stability–thank goodness, so far today is dull on the U.S. market
No big moves. No major disruptions. No threats of meltdowns. Today has been a welcome breather, a bit of stability, for  market that’s had more than its share of excitement this week. So far. It’s only 1:30 p.m. in New York. And we could see selling or...
5 smart, short-term moves while we wait for longer-term trends to resolve
Yesterday in my post “What do you do when the market is insane and you’re not?” I argued that one of the dangers in a very volatile market with strong–and temporarily profitable–short-term trends is that we’ll give in to the...
Stocks fall again as WHO declares coronavirus pandemic, White House fails to deliver stimulus plan–no place to hide outside of Treasuries and the yen
As of 1:45 p.m. in New York the Standard & Poor’s 500 is down 4.62% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is off 5.13%. The NASDAQ Composite is lower by 4.40% and the Russell 2000 small cap index, with its heavy load of smaller U.S. oil producers, has lost...
Credit markets are even uglier than stock markets
By now I assume you know that today was another brutal day for U.S. stocks (although markets moved up significantly in the last hour.) The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed down another 1.71% and the Dow Jones Industrials dropped 0.98%. The NASDAQ Composite was...
What now for Treasuries and their ETFs? Should you be buying even at record low yields? I’m adding shares of Vanguard’s 1-3 year Treasury ETF
I’d wager that almost nobody today is buying U.S. Treasuries for their yield. The yield on the 10-year Treasury broke below 1% to 0.9043% for the first time EVER. The 10-year finished the day with a yield of 1.01%. The yield on the 2-year Treasury fell to a low...
Oops!”Emergency” interest rate cut spurs U.S. stock sell off as Fed creates negative feedback loop
The U.S. Federal Reserve announced an “emergency” 50 basis point cut to its benchmark interest rate. The cut left the Fed benchmark with a range of 1% to 1.25%. The move comes ahead of the Fed’s regular meeting on March 18. The interest rate cut,...
Today’s attempt at a bounce doesn’t hold–S&P 500 closes down in New York
This morning it looked like U.S. stocks would bounce from the drop of Monday and Tuesday–about 6% on the Standard & Poor’s 500. As of 10:51 a.m. New York time the index was up 1.64% to 3182.08. But that has turned out to be the high of the day. By...
Powell refuses chance to say the Fed is on interest rate hold through 2020
Given a chance to say that the Federal Reserve will keep its interest rate policy on hold through 2020, Fed chair Jerome Powell refused to take the bait at this morning’s testimony in front of the congressional Joint Economic Committee.  “We see the current...
Today the market is in “Give back some of those gains” mode on a disappointing retail sales report
It would be an overstatement, in my opinion, to say the market is trendless. I think there’s a definite and but unspectacular bias to the upside in the short-term–four weeks, say. It would be accurate, however, to say, there’s not much conviction to...
The Powell Put underneath the financial markets and the U.S. economy just got stronger
It quacks like quantitative easing. It walks like quantitative easing. But it’s not quantitative easing. According to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell anyway. In a speech today, October 8, to the National Association for Business Economics, Powell said the...
I think we can call this a data dependent market for Friday
The trend in U.S. financial markets this week has pointed down on data that shows the U.S. economy is slowing. Certainly the disappointing numbers in both the manufacturing and services Purchasing Managers Indexes have supported that conclusion. That could all change...
Wall Street puts two more 2019 interest rate cuts back on the table
Yesterday’s disappointing Purchasing Managers Index news on U.S. manufacturing has put two interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve back on Wall Street’s expectations.(Economists had expected that the PMI number for September would show the...
Financial markets still showing signs of indigestion in debt auctions so Fed will pump another $75 billion into money markets tomorrow
Today, Friday, September 20, the Federal Reserve will buy another $75 billion in the overnight repo market. That brings the total this week to $203 billion in the Fed’s effort to stabilize the short-term markets that Wall Street uses to finance its purchases of...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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