April 17, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
China’s economy expanded at 6.4% year over year. That beat the 6.3% expected by economists surveyed by Briefing.com. That projected 6.3% growth itself marked a step up in optimism about China’s economy.
April 8, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
Something happened at the end of March that we all need to pay attention to. By this point in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, we're immune to wonder at the existence of government bonds with negative yields. Why would anyone in their right minds pay a...
April 4, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing, Volatility, You Might Have Missed |
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index fell to 58.9 from 60 in the week ended March 31, according to a report Thursday. That's an eight-week low. Survey respondents’ sentiment on their personal finances posted the steepest two-week drop since 2015. All three main...
March 28, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
It's all my fault. I go away for two days to tour colleges with my daughter, and global bond markets soar as everybody in the world decides to seek safety simultaneously. Today's pause has very little to do with my return to my desk. The rise in bond prices has been...
March 25, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
The figures are short-term and tentative but the trend isn't good. Global trade volume fell 1.8% in the three months through January from the previous three months, according to the World Trade Monitor from the statistics office of the Netherlands. That's the biggest...
March 19, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
It's an extraordinary report--even if it's not clear what the Trump administration intends to do with it or about it In a report released today, March 19, President Trump's Council of Economic Advisers said that the U.S. economy would be unlikely to reach the 3%...
March 11, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
The level of fear among the managers of funds that buy investment-grade and high-yield debt has sunk to its lowest level since 2014, according to the Bank of America's March survey of fund managers. “The most notable change in our fresh survey of U.S. credit investors...
March 6, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Volatility, You Might Have Missed |
Yesterday, March 6, the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) joined the International Monetary Fund in warning that the global economy is slowing more than previously expected. "The global expansion continues to lose momentum," the OECD said in...
March 5, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
Against the setting of the National People's Congress, which opened today, China's leaders announced that the growth target for the economy in 2019 would be 6%-6.5%, down slightly from the 2018 target of 6.6%. That dip is significant since the Chinese Communist Party...
February 20, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
As surprises go today's release of the Federal Reserve's minutes from its January meeting doesn't rank up there with Agatha Christie. (Remember 10 Little Indians? Where the murderer turns out to be someone who had earlier faked his own murder?) But still as Fed...
February 18, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
With U.S. stock markets closed today for Presidents' Day, credit market news has an opening to move higher on the Investor Worry Bandstand. (The kids give it an 65, as they used to say on American Bandstand. But I think its moving up fast. The American Bandstand...
February 13, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
The 19-country EuroZone economy could expand by just 1% in 2019 with industrial production falling at the fastest rate since the global financial crisis. This time it's the core economies of Germany and France, which together make up about half of the EuroZone...
