December 23, 2020 | Daily JAM, Short Term, You Might Have Missed |
On Tuesday President Donald Trump tweeted a video heavily criticizing the recently passed coronavirus stimulus/relief bill–and a huge funding bill to keep the government running–and implying that he could veto the bill. Today, Wednesday, December 23, stocks barely budged. The Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 0.07%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.38%. The NASDAQ Composite was down 0.29% and the NASDAQ 100 fell 0.51%. The small cap Russell 2000 picked up 0.87%. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF rose 1.02%. Why the lack of reaction?
December 18, 2020 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed down 0.35% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.415. The NASDAQ Composite was off 0.07% and the NASDAQ 100 slipped 0.11%. The small cap Russell 2000 dropped 0.41%. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) closed off 0.22%. Those aren’t bad results for the day–considering. Considering that Congress is watching the clock tick down to a government shutdown at midnight tonight without a stopgap or a complete spending bill for the fiscal year that began on October 1, 2020. Considering that Congress has not been able to resolve the remaining disagreements and pass a new coronavirus stimulus/relief bill. Federal programs such as unemployment extensions, unemployment for gig workers and the self-employed, and a moratorium on evictions all expire on December 31.
December 12, 2020 | Daily JAM |
Expect news from the Federal Reserve and from Congress on a government shutdown and a new coronavirus stimulus/relief bill. The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee meets on Wednesday, December 16. The markets expect the Fed to leave interest rates unchanged, but there’s likely to be verbiage out of the central bank that will move markets, although perhaps just fractionally.
December 9, 2020 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The government runs out of money–again–at midnight on December 11. The House of Representative plans to vote on Wednesday, today, on a continuing resolution that would extend spending for seven days at current levels. The Senate will take up that bill after the House vote. And assuming that no senator uses any of that chamber’s arcane rules to delay the vote, Congress will have averted a shutdown by the slimmest of margins
December 8, 2020 | Daily JAM |
Negotiators in Congress trying to hammer out a new coronavirus stimulus/relief package hadn’t heard from the White House since the November election. Today they did with Treasury Secretar adding a $916 billion package to the mix. Whether having the White House back in the talks is a good or a bad thing is still an open question.
December 8, 2020 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to refuse to endorse the $908 billion package and today offered up a new proposal to eliminate his demand to exempt companies from legal liability for coronavirus damages (say, if they lied to workers about infections in their workplace) in exchange for Democrats dropping their insistence of $160 billion of so in aid for states and cities. “It’s my view, and I think it’s the view shared by literally everybody on both sides of the aisle, that we can’t leave without doing a Covid bill,” McConnell said at a news conference. “The country needs it.” Democrats weren’t having any of McConnell’s “compromise.”
December 6, 2020 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
News this week from the Food & Drug Administration on a coronavirus vaccine–and maybe even the start of vaccinations–plus news on action on funding to keep the government open past Friday–plus news on a new coronavirus stimulus package–all this week
December 2, 2020 | Daily JAM |
Today House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer embraced the $908 billion coronavirus stimulus platform put forward by a bipartisan group of Senators. Even though it falls far short of the last $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed by House Democrats. This is either real progress–and Republican and Democratic leaders will use the $907 billion proposal to hammer out a much needed coronavirus stimulus package. Or it’s a cynical ploy by Democrats who know that Senate Majority Leader doesn’t have the votes to pass even his $500 billion proposal and that this move puts all the onus on Republicans for doing nothing while American families and businesses suffer.
November 30, 2020 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
Will the jobs report on Friday, December 4, be worrying enough to blast Washington out of what increasing looks like another stalemate over funding the government and another coronavirus stimulus bill? Economists generally expect that the jobs report will show that the economy continues to slow under the impact of new economic restrictions intended to slow the rate of coronavirus infections. Right now Congress and the White House aren’t showing much sense of urgency over either the economic pain in the country, which will get significantly worse when just about all the earlier coronavirus stimulus programs expire on December 3, or on passing a bill to fund the federal government past the December 10 deadline.
November 2, 2020 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
To my way of thinking, investors and traders got ahead of themselves today. With election day still a day away, stocks in economically sensitive sectors moved up while stocks of the technology companies that have been able to show revenue growth even during the...
October 20, 2020 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
The Standard & Poor's 500 was up by as much as 1.42% at 1:48 p.m. New York time today on hope that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin would agree on a stimulus deal by Pelosi's deadline of the end of today for passing a bill by the...
September 27, 2020 | Daily JAM |
... junk bond sales and prices to be a key indicator of cash flows in the market--and of worries about a new surge in coronavirus cases this fall. Until this past week companies continued to raise huge sums--$18 billion in the week ended on September 18--in the market...
