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Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…
... much less earnings drama now that Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX) and other big tech market leaders have reported. But next week has a bumper crop of earnings reports scheduled with many of them in the important industrial sector where the effects of...
Saturday Night Quarterback says (on a Sunday), For the week ahead expect…
If the markets do decide that Italy is a problem for another day, that means we’ll revert to the trends that set direction before the crisis gained top of the mind status: oil prices (and the likelihood of an increase in production from OPEC), an interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve on June 13, and tariffs and the possibility of a U.S./China trade war.
Saturday Night Quarterback says, for the week ahead expect…
Next week we get just enough economic news to keep the state of the economy bubbling on the back burners of trader and investor attention, while first quarter earnings season picks up momentum. It’s not a lengthy list of economic reports scheduled for this week, but they are important ones. On Monday, for example, we get retail sales for March with economists expecting a big bounce back from a disappointing February
Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…
This week I expect the rotation from worry to relief over the Trump administration’s tariff policy and a potential trade war with China to stay in control of the narrative. Next week we’re likely to shift to earnings stories as companies begin to report really good first quarter earnings. After a couple of weeks of that we’ll either slide back to the trade narrative or start to get ready for the Federal Reserve narrative surrounding a June invest rate hike.
Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…
The week’s economic news reaches a crescendo with Friday’s report on March jobs. That Friday report will set the tone for the market’s take on the speed with which the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its next two meetings. Right now the Fed Funds futures market is showing almost no chance of an increase from the current 1.5% to 1.75% range at the May 2 meeting. The odds, however, soar to an 80.5% chance of an increase in interest rates at the Fed’s June 13 meeting
Hey, it also looks like Congress will fund the government past Friday–remember that crisis?
You might have missed it in the hoopla over President Donald Trump’s signing an order to apply higher tariffs to $50 billion in Chinese goods and the “associated” 724 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. But the House of Representatives passed a $1.3 tillion spending bill that keeps the government funded past tomorrow’s deadline and through the end of the fiscal year in September.
So what’s behind today’s plunge in U.S. stocks?
This isn’t going to sound very technical or sophisticated but to me the day feels like one where lots of traders and investors decided that they just couldn’t see any near term upside and in the absence of that upside they decided to sell. This pessimism strikes me as a delayed reaction to yesterday’s Fed meeting and a new dot plot that showed increased sentiment at the Federal Reserve for at least two more and possibly three more interest rate increases in 2018–and more rate increases to come in 2019 and 2020. In this context the President’s China tariff proposal isn’t the killer but rather just one more negative element.
Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…
Lots and lots of big macro potentially market moving news this week. Events range from the first 2018 meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers to an almost certain interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve to the effective date for U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum
Industrial stocks lag the market: sign that tariff and trade war fears aren’t behind us
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
Saturday Night Quarterback ( on a Sunday) says, For the week ahead expect…
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.)
Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…
A market with an obsessive interest in inflation will get plenty to obsess about this week. On Monday, February 26, Randal Quarles, the new vice-chair for regulatory supervision at the Fed, delivers a speech titled An Assessment of the U.S. Economy at the 34th Annual National Association for Business Economics conference. On Tuesday morning, new Fed chair Jerome H. Powell delivers the Fed’s Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress to the House Financial Services Committee. And on Friday government statisticians deliver the PCE data on inflation
