May 2, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
As expected by the financial markets, the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at today’s meeting of the Open Market Committee. As expected the Fed didn’t really clarify its stance on inflation and interest rate increases, acknowledging inflation is close to target without indicating any intention to veer from gradual tightening of monetary policy. But it left open the possibility that it might be willing to let inflation creep over 2% in the short run and for a short period of time
April 30, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, the core Personal Consumption Expenditures index (Which excludes fed and energy prices) rose to an annual rate of 1.9% in March the Commerce Department announced this morning. That was inline with economist forecasts and market expectations. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 2.94%. It stood at 2.96% on Friday.
April 29, 2018 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend |
Nobody expects the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at its May 2 meeting. Or to be precise almost nobody expects the Fed to move. The odds of an interest rate increase by the Fed are just 6.2%, according to the CME Fed Watch Tool, which calculates the odds of a Fed move by looking at prices in the Fed Funds Futures market. In addition there’s no press conference scheduled nor will the Fed produce one of its updates of its projections on the likely performance of the economy. But this doesn’t mean the Wednesday meeting can’t swing the market.
April 27, 2018 | Morning Briefing |
U.S. GDP grew at an annualized rate of 2.3% in the first quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced this morning. Economists had expected growth of 2.1%. In the fourth quarter of 2017, the U.S. economy had grown at an annualized rate of 2.9%. But the rate of growth for the U.S. economy was overshadowed by other data in this morning’s report showing a significant increase in wages and inflation.
April 26, 2018 | Daily JAM |
The Bureau of Economic Analysis releases the first take on economic growth in the first quarter of 2018 tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. New York time. So by the time the financial markets open in New York, investors and traders will have had a chance to absorb the report and decide how they feel about it.Economists surveyed by Briefing.com are looking for the growth rate to drop to 2.1% for the quarter. That would be down from 2.9% in the fourth quarter of 2017 and from 2.3% for all of 2017.
April 20, 2018 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend, TBX |
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury climbed to 2.95% today, up 4 basis points on the day. That equals the high yield for 2018 set back in February. The driver this time is an increase in commodity prices that has revived fears of inflation
April 12, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
On Saturday in my Saturday Night Quarterback look ahead at the week on JubakAM.com I wrote that the week before the start of earnings reporting season–in other words, this week that we’re now in–was likely to see the market bounce from one idea to the next with one day’s worries sinking the market and the next day’s leading to gains. That’s exactly what we saw yesterday
April 9, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
As you’ll remember when last we left the U.S. economy–on Friday morning–it had just reported a disappointing addition of 103,000 net new jobs for March. Economists had been looking for 183,000. The unemployment rate stayed at 4.1%, where it’s been stuck for six straight months. (Economists were expecting unemployment to drop to 4.0%.) Average hourly earnings, in a piece of good news, climbed 0.3% from January and 2.7% year over year.
March 29, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
U.S. stocks are up as of 1:30 p.m. today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is ahead 0.95% and the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index is up 1.08%. Two reasons for this, I think, and the second is more important today. First, we had a raft of positive economic news this morning. Second, it’s the end of the first quarter and last chance for window dressing.
March 24, 2018 | Daily JAM |
Despite all the hoo-ha about tariffs, trade wars, and John Bolton’s appointment as national security advisor, the government will continue to pump out important economic data. This week the big day is Thursday (since Friday is a market holiday). That day sees the release of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, the Personal Consumption Expenditure index (PCE).
March 16, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term, Volatility |
The U.S. stock market decided that today’s economic reports showed a glass half full. Interpretations pointing in the other direction, however, were easy enough to make so the end result wasn’t so much a wave of optimism lifting markets strongly higher as a sigh of relief. For the day the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index was up 0.17%
March 14, 2018 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
U.S. retail sales fell for a third straight month in February–down 0.1%. The Commerce Department revised January sales higher than the initially reported 0.3% decline. But that still left January sales down 0.1%. That means that February marks a third consecutive decline in retail sales–the first time that’s happened since April 2012. Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast retail sales had climbed 0.3% in February.
