September 6, 2019 | Daily JAM, Volatility, You Might Have Missed |
With China's economy expected to slow further in September after poor results in July and August, the People's Bank of China cut the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves to the lowest level since 2007. The required reserve ratio for all banks will be...
September 6, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
The U.S. economy added 130,000 jobs in August. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected 171,000 new jobs. Once you subtracted the 25,000 new temporary jobs added by the government for the 2020 census, the results were even more disappointing with the private...
September 4, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
As of 2 p.m. New York time U.S. stocks were higher on just about no meaningful news. To me it looks like the market wants to climb in the very near term--testing technical momentum to move to 2950 on the Standard & Poor's 500 and maybe beyond. The "reasons" being...
September 1, 2019 | Daily JAM |
... some things in the financial markets will be so similar to what they were before the Labor Day holiday that you might think you were never away at all. Not everything, though. Yes, the U.S.-China trade war will still be hanging fire. And the tariffs on $112...
August 26, 2019 | Daily JAM |
The U.S.-China trade war continues to erode business confidence in Germany. Business confidence in the country, home to Europe's largest economy, fell to its weakest level in almost seven years as a deepening manufacturing slump put the German economy on the verge of...
August 23, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term, Volatility |
Xi Jinping and Donald Trump upstaged Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell this morning. Powell's Jackson Hole speech this morning was supposed to be the day's big market event. (More on this speech in a later post.) But this morning China announced that it would...
August 19, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Gotta love that financial market enthusiasm for central banks. Last week the markets rallied on signals from the European Central Bank that it would cut its key interest rate--now at a negative 0.40%--to a negative -0.50%, lower the rates that banks pay to borrow...
August 10, 2019 | Daily JAM |
... well, expect that nothing much else will matter if the yuan-dollar exchange rate moves noticeably up or down this week. In a normal week, investors and traders would be studying reports on inflation (CPI), retail sales, initial claims for unemployment, oil...
August 8, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
U.S. stocks rallied strongly today, Thursday, August 8, after the People's Bank of China set its daily reference rate for its currency at 7.0039 to the dollar. That was stronger than the 7.0156 yuan to the dollar overnight estimate of 21 analysts and trader surveyed...
August 7, 2019 | Daily JAM |
More tweets today from President Donald Trump in his campaign to pressure the Federal Reserve into more aggressive cuts to interest rates. “Incompetence is a terrible thing to watch, especially when things could be taken care of sooo easily. We will WIN anyway,” the...
August 7, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Shares of Apple (AAPL) climbed 0.21% to lead the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) higher by 0.40% as of 2 p.m. trading in New York. That helped disguise what is otherwise a return to the risk off trading of Monday after Tuesday's rally--although with smaller...
August 6, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Stocks rallied today on signs that the People's Bank intends to deliver an orderly drop in China's currency. This morning the yuan traded slightly above the critical 7 yuan to the dollar currency band. And the bank said it will sell $4.2 billion in yuan bills in Hong...
