December 4, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
A day after "news" on the lack of progress of U.S.-China trade talks led to a decline in stocks, "news" of progress in the talks has led to a modest rally. The Standard & Poor's 500 closed up 0.63% today and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was ahead 0.53%. The...
December 3, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
“I don’t have a deadline,” Trump told reporters today in London. “I like the idea of waiting until after the election for the China deal. But they want to make a deal now and we’ll see whether not the deal is going to be right.” And with that financial markets that...
December 2, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
President Donald Trump has reinstated tariffs on steel and aluminum exports from Argentina and Brazil, leaving global financial markets wondering what that means. At best, the move is based on mis-understanding by the White House of how exchange rates work. The...
November 8, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
The uncertainty extends even to whether or not a Part 1 trade deal between the United States and China will even get signed in 2019. Yesterday, China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng said negotiators had “agreed to remove additional tariffs in phases as...
September 21, 2019 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend |
Our regular (or occasional or perhaps occasionally regular) Friday series (actually running on Saturday this week) Trick or Trend looks at what might (or might not) be emerging investible trends. Exclusively on JAM. This post won't run anywhere else. Ever. It was...
September 11, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
Ahead of the resumption of U.S.-China trade negotiators next month China has announced a small set of exclusions--on $1.65 billion in U.S. exports to China--from 25% tariffs that were put into place last year. The exempt goods include such minor categories as alfalfa,...
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 23, 2019 | Daily JAM |
That didn't take long. This afternoon President Donald Trump said he would raise tariffs to retaliation to this morning's move by China to impose a new 10% tariff on $75 billion in U.S. exports to China. Trump's move would increase tariffs already in effect on $250...
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 14, 2019 | Daily JAM |
A U.S. economy facing the possibility of a slowdown sure doesn't need troubles in the Farm Belt. But that's exactly what the farm sector is seeing. New figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that farm income in 2018 was about 50% of what it was in 2013....
August 14, 2019 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 800.49 points today, or 3.05%; the Standard & Poor's 500 finished 2.93% lower; and the NASDAQ Composite lost 3.02%. One reason for the plunge was an intraday inversion in the Treasury yield curve with the yield on the...
August 13, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Just in case you were wondering: Nothing matters to the stock market except tariffs. I think today's trading proves that. This morning the Trump administration announced that it would delay new 10% tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese goods set to go into effect on...