Central Bankers Flip Flop It appears that President Trump will pick Powell in the next few days as there’s an 86% chance on the PredictIt website. While the decision is known, the chart below provides context to how it may have been made. As you can see, the chart shows the policy positions of each
No Volatility? It’s important to constantly review the level of volatility in the market to quantify how unusual the market has been this year. To a long term investor, normal changes in volatility shouldn’t matter. However, when records are constantly broken, we need to re-evaluate the market to se
Stocks Don’t Like Gradual Tax Cut Stocks fell slightly on Monday on the prospect that corporate tax rates could be lowered gradually. The small caps are affected the most by this legislation because they have the highest percentage of domestic earnings. This caused the Russell 2000 to fall 1.15%. We
Tech Continues To Ramp Friday was an amazing day for tech stocks as the Nasdaq increased 2.20%. The Dow rallied a few days ago because big companies within it reported great results. Today was the Nasdaq’s turn as MSFT, GOOGL, and AMZN all reported great results. Even companies which didn’t report w
AMZN, GOOGL MSFT Beat Expectations Thursday afternoon was a big moment for the market because AMZN, GOOGL, and MSFT reported great results. This will send the Nasdaq soaring into the holiday season. AMZN stock had stalled in the past few months as the company reported a bad quarter 3 months ago. Thu
On Thursday the ECB released its plan for QE for 2018. It was exactly as expected as the bond buying was cut in half to 30 billion euros per month for 9 months and then lowered to nothing over the next 3 months. Draghi made some missteps this year with the way he handled guidance,
In keeping with the great reports elsewhere, the Markit Flash PMI showed economic strength. Private sector growth reached a 9 month high in October mainly because of the improvement in manufacturing. The composite output index was 55.7 which was an improvement from last month’s report of 54.8. The s
Extreme Optimism Leads To A Small Decline In Stocks The market finally took a breather on Wednesday. It wasn’t a major selloff because dip buyers appeared mid-day. It was healthy to see because the run had gotten ridiculous. The S P 500 fell 0.47%. It was driven lower by weak Chipotle earnings and p
ECB’s Big Decision The chart below shows the aggregate assets the 4 major central banks from developed market economies have been acquiring over the past 12 years. As you can see, the asset buying has slowed and accelerated in the past few years, but the aggregate share of GDP has almost never stopp
The Market Never Falls Anymore Even though the Dow was overbought heading into the week, the biggest determining factor for how it would go was earnings. This shows how technical analysis has its limits when news is released. The Dow rallied 0.73% because Caterpillar and 3M reported great results. T
