March 14, 2018 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. This post from today is a representative item: “10:20 a.m.: Not a single 10-year note traded in Japanese markets yesterday. The Bank of Japan now holds 40% of all Japanese government debt. Add in such buy-and-hold investors as pension funds and life insurance companies and there’s just not much Japanese Government paper to buy or sell–especially for the 10-year benchmark. My favorite comment was this from Barclays Securities Japan rates strategist Naoya Oshikubo to Bloomberg: “The JGB market was generally thin.” This would seem to suggest that the Japanese government’s policy of buying bonds to reduce interest rates and weaken the yen has reached an endpoint–in the government bond market anyway.”
March 14, 2018 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
U.S. retail sales fell for a third straight month in February–down 0.1%. The Commerce Department revised January sales higher than the initially reported 0.3% decline. But that still left January sales down 0.1%. That means that February marks a third consecutive decline in retail sales–the first time that’s happened since April 2012. Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast retail sales had climbed 0.3% in February.
March 13, 2018 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
I’m actually surprised that U.S. stocks have held up as well today as they have. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.64% at the close and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.68%. The NASDAQ, which had been leading markets higher recently, fell harder but still showed only a 1.02% drop at the close. Not bad for a day when President Donald Trump announced the departure of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. And when a Politico headline said that new steep tariffs and investment restrictions on China could be coming as soon as next week.
March 13, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
After a worrying 0.5% jump in January, headline inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index increased by just 02.% in February. That was right on the 0.2% mark expected by economists surveyed by Briefing.com. Core inflation, which excludes more volatile food and energy priced, rose 0.2% in February, again right at economist projections, after a 0.3% rise in January.
March 12, 2018 | Daily JAM, Uncategorized, You Might Have Missed |
Today, Monday March 12, the Industrial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLI) fell 1.24%, declining more than either the Standard & Poor’s 500 (down 0.13%) or the Dow Jones Industrial Average (down 0.62%.) I think this is an indication that fears that the Trump administration will still manage to set off a round of trade retaliation to its higher tariffs on steel and aluminum are still with us. Â
March 12, 2018 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
The U.S. Treasury sold $28 billion of three-year Treasury notes and $21 billion of 10-year notes today–and the price of the 10-year note actually climbed, taking the yield down to 2.87%, three basis points lower than Friday’s 2.90% yield. This was a good result for the bond market and for the U.S. Treasury
March 12, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
China’s financial system certainly isn’t out of the woods yet, but the country has made substantial progress in moving away from a potential banking crisis, according to the Bank for International Settlements.
March 11, 2018 | Uncategorized |
U.S. stock markets will start the week testing the significance of Friday’s 1.74% (47.6 point) gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index (and the 1.74%, 440 point gain in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.)
March 10, 2018 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend |
So which countries will get an exemption from the Trump administration’s 25% tariff on imported steel and 10% on imported aluminum? If the administration passes out enough exemptions, then what remains will be a tariff targeted at China–and maybe at South Korea.
March 9, 2018 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. A representative sample is this entry from today: “10: 20 a.m.: Recode is out with the compilation of reviews on Samsung’s new flagship phones, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ due in stores on Friday, March 16. Consensus: It’s not an “If you’ve seen last year’s Galaxy S8, you’ve seen the $719.99 S9. The Bixby voice assistant is still a dud.” Samsung added a number of gimmicky features, Recode concludes, such as face-scanning, aperture-switching, Super Slow Motion and AR Emoji to show on TV commercials. The company did make a number of unseen changed to improve the user experience. My take is that this illustrates the big current problem with top end smart phones: Where’s the whiz-bang to get people to ditch their old phone and spend $700 to $1,000 on a new model?”
March 9, 2018 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Volatility, You Might Have Missed |
It’s only March but I’m rethinking my take on 2018.When the calendar pages turned over into 2018, my take on the year was that for stocks the first half would be much like 2017: Despite rising interest rates from the Federal Reserve, there was enough earnings growth to move stocks up even from near record highs. The bond market would be more problematic with those interest rate increases keeping downward pressure on bond prices and upward pressure on bond yields. With inflation still relatively quiescent, though, the downward trend in bond prices would be relatively gradual. It was the second half of the year that investors had to worry about, I thought then.
March 9, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The U.S. economy added 313,000 jobs in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com were looking for a gain of 210,000 jobs. The one piece of negative news was on average hourly pay. Pay rose by 2.6% year over year, but that was a drop from the 2.9% year over year increase reported in January.
