President Trump’s speech on nationwide TV Wednesday did little to calm the markets or provide assurance that the Mideast war will end sooner rather than later. The overriding impression garnered from his comments is that the prospect of an escalation of hostilities is just as likely as a diplomatic ceasefire. That left the markets mired…
The first quarter of this year was a wild one for the stock market. The S & P 500 Stock Index lost about 4%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 3.25%. In late January the two indices set all-time highs. The culprit: the Iran war – sending gasoline prices up about 30%, pointing to higher inflation and possibly higher interest rates,…
Despite President Trump’s decision to postpone the deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz — and delay bombing of Iran’s power plants – for another 10 days, the turmoil in the financial markets has not subsided – and likely won’t until visible signs the Mideast war is ending, and the oil spigot reopens….
A widely admired principle states that when you’re surrounded by chaos, seek out the calmest person in the room for direction. That search is ongoing, but Fed chair Powell represented as good of a stand-in this week as anyone available. Given the heat coming from all sides, he was able to cobble together a consensus…
The fog of war is shrouding the economic outlook, and only time and the amount of devastation will determine the ultimate outcome. Aside from human lives, the oil market has so far been the primary victim of the Mid-East conflagration; but the energy sector’s tentacles reach far and wide and the longer tensions persist, the…
It will take time for the dust to settle, but Friday’s employment report clearly kicked up a sandstorm, prompting markets, pundits and oddsmakers to reassess the economic landscape and the policy response. Predictably, the surprisingly downbeat news on the jobs front ignited a dramatic knee jerk reaction, as it undercut widespread notions of the economy’s…
The Federal Reserve could not be happy with the hotter than expected print for wholesale prices released on Friday. The PPI increased by an outsized 0.5 % in January following an upwardly revised 0.4 % advance in December. While the core PPI came in as expected, at 0.3 %, the service price components remained sticky…
Tensions are escalating on a number of fronts, from military developments, conflicting economic data and, somewhat surprisingly, a Supreme Court ruling on Friday upending the administration signature trade policies. The ruling, which disallowed the administration’s use of emergency powers to justify the avalanche of tariffs over the past year, was not entirely unexpected, but it…
Like the fictional King of Siam who grappled with what he knows and what he doesn’t know, so too must economists as well as the Fed view this week’s batch of data as a”puzzlement”. The January employment report flpped the no hiring/no firing narrative on its head; the December retail sales report upended notions that…
To say it was a topsy-turvy week in the markets would be an understatement, as extreme volatility buffeted stocks, bonds and commodities. Gold and silver suffered their biggest one-day plunge in over 35 years to start the week, after hitting record highs at the end of the previous week. Similar, if less extreme, daily swings…