Fed Cuts Rates 25 Basis Points Powell Gives No Signal For More Cuts The Fed cut rates once on Wednesday which is exactly what the market expected. Initially, there was no stock market reaction to the decision and statement. Then stocks sold off after Powell stated there wasn’t necessarily a plan to
Slight Increase In Stocks As Investors Await Fed Meeting Thanks to the 0.25% rally in the final 40 minutes of Tuesday’s trading session, the S P 500 closed up 0.26%. This put it about 20 points away from its record high. Nasdaq was up 0.4% and the Russell 2000 was down 0.4%. VIX fell 0.23 to
Another Solid Redbook Retail Sales Report Redbook retail sales report showed yearly growth fell 1 point from 6.4% to 5.4% in the week of September 14th. This is still a solid reading. Growth decline if the August retail would have been more concerning if the sales report had come in weak. Since it w
Biggest Spike In Oil Prices Ever There was a massive increase in oil prices on Monday because of a coordinated attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil production. Specifically, the oil processing facility in Abqaiq and the nearby Khurais oil field were attacked. That shutdown 5.7 million barrels of production
Disappointing Empire Fed Manufacturing Report General business conditions index in the September Empire Fed manufacturing report fell modestly. But the expectations index fell significantly, so I’ll call this a disappointing report. Empire Fed index is just one of the 5 regional Fed reports, but it
Slight Increase in Consumer Confidence The University of Michigan consumer confidence survey in August was terrible. This led some investors to get scared because it seemed like the consumer was in trouble. However, it’s notable that this survey is correlated with the stock market. Volatility in sto
Treasuries Selloff Again Action in the bond market has been absurd this week. As you can see from the chart below, the long bond ETF TLT ended its 100 day streak of being above its 50 day moving average. That was its longest streak in history. The selloff that I had been waiting for occurred
Trade Deal Could Spark A New Run Higher It’s no surprise stocks rallied on Thursday because of President Trump’s positive tweets on trade on Wednesday evening. This is why you can’t just sell stocks if there are a lot of tweets. That study that showed a high number of tweets being associated with do
Headline CPI Misses Core CPI Beats The August CPI report doesn’t change anything about near term Fed policy. It only alters my thinking on the economy slightly. These slight changes drive the day to day action, so they aren’t something to gloss over. Specifically, headline CPI was weak as it was 0.1
