Short Term
April 26, 2022 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
China expanded coronavirus testing to most of Beijing as rising cases fuel fears about an unprecedented lockdown of the capital. Officials on Monday night said testing would take place in another 11 of Beijing’s 16 districts, moving beyond just Chaoyang, where most of the infections have been detected since Friday. The city of more than 20 million people has already locked down parts of the eastern district of Chaoyang, home to 3.5 million people, with plans to ease restrictions after residents complete a testing regimen on April 27. The bad news from Beijing added to new bad news from a locked down Shanghai
April 17, 2022 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery climbed 1% to $108.01 a barrel at 10:09 a.m. Monday in Singapore. International benchmark Brent crude for June delivery gained 1.1% to $112.97 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. Two Libyan ports have been forced to stop loading oil
April 11, 2022 | Daily JAM, Short Term, You Might Have Missed |
Economists surveyed by Reuters are projecting that inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), will climb to 8.4% year over year for March against an 8% rate in February when data is released tomorrow before the open of the U.S. stock market.
April 9, 2022 | C, Daily JAM, Dividend Income, Jubak Picks, KBWB, Perfect Five-ETFs, Short Term, USB, WFC, You Might Have Missed |
Big banks will kick off another earnings season beginning with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) on Wednesday, April 13. Citigroup (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC) follow on April 14. Bank of America (BAC) reports on April 18. Bank earnings forecasts present a complicated picture for the quarter–which is only appropriate since that’s true of Standard & Poor’s 500 earnings forecasts as a whole.
April 6, 2022 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
Minutes from the March meeting of the Federal Reserve released Wednesday, April 6, showed that only Russia’s invasion of Ukraine kept the central bank from raising benchmark interest rates by 50 basis points instead the 25 basis-point increase the Fed actually instituted at that meeting. “Many” Fed officials viewed one or more half-point increases as appropriate going forward if price pressures fail to moderate. The minutes showed the Fed proposing to shrink its balance sheet at a maximum pace of $60 billion in Treasuries and $35 billion in mortgage-backed securities each month. That’s in line with market expectations
April 5, 2022 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term, You Might Have Missed |
In remarks prepared for a Tuesday speech to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard said “Currently, inflation is much too high and is subject to upside risks. The committee is prepared to take stronger action if indicators of inflation and inflation expectations indicate that such action is warranted.” And she called for reducing the Fed’s balance sheet as early as next month. The bond market certainly heard Brainard’s remarks as a promise of more action faster.
March 31, 2022 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Today, March 31, OPEC+, which includes Russia, decided to stick with their previously agreed plan of modest monthly increases. Despite repeated asks from Washington and European countries to increase production in order to make up for shortfalls from Russia due to Western sanctions on that country as a result of its invasion of Ukraine, OPEC+ said it would increase oil output in May by 432,000 barrels a day, a slight uptick from the agreed increase of 400,000 barrels a day. The small increase–essentially no increase at all–would be for “technical reasons.” OPEC+ repeated its outlook for a month ago saying that the outlook was for “a well-balanced market” and that recent volatility in prices was “not caused by fundamentals, but by ongoing geopolitical developments.” Well, yeah. And isn’t that the point?
March 30, 2022 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Hopes for a cease fire in Ukraine and for serious peace talks between Russia and Ukraine took the stock indexes up yesterday and the price of oil and oil stocks down. News of renewed Russian shelling today took the market back down and oil and oil stocks back up today.
March 24, 2022 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Initial claims for unemployment set a more than 50-year low last week. The Labor Department reported initial jobless claims, for the week ended March 19, fell to 187,000 versus an expected 210,000 expected and a revised 215,000 for the prior week.
March 14, 2022 | Daily JAM, Short Term, Videos |
I’m starting up my videos on JubakAM.com again–this time using YouTube as a platform. My one-hundredth-and twelfth YouTube video “Trend of the Week: Central banks tighten faster than expected” went up today. This week I’m looking at tightening by central banks, including the Fed. I think that some of us expected that with the invasion of Ukraine, banks would pump the brakes on raising interest rates and reducing their stimulus. With its announcement last week that it would accelerate the reduction of bond buying, the European Central Bank sent the opposite signal, and that makes me think that the Fed will stay the course to raise rates as well when it reports this Wednesday. I look at the volatility in the treasury market and talk about some moves you can make to take advantage of changing and volatile yields.
March 13, 2022 | Daily JAM, EUM, Short Term, Volatility |
I think the trend has finally turned against emerging market stocks. All it took was the threat of a debt default by Russia. That shift is too late for the Brazil and Mexico Put Options I bought on January 24, which expire on Mach 18. But with a Russian debt default looming I’m replacing those Puts with an ETF that shorts the major emerging markets index.
February 28, 2022 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
The U.S. Treasury has prohibited transactions with the Central Bank of Russia and imposed sanctions on a key Russian sovereign wealth fund. I can’t find any other instance where sanctions as sweeping as these have been imposed on a central bank and economy this big. Suffice it to say, this is uncharted territory and no one knows where this will take us.
