After weeks of complacency—a deal will be negotiated!—the market is suddenly alive to the possibility that it won’t. The Greek government continues to refuse to surrender on what it calls its “red line” issues
Today’s numbers on initial claims for unemployment and existing sales give a good indication of why the Fed is delaying an initial interest rate increase: The strength of economic growth is just too uncertain to risk an interest rate increase that could stall the economy
Today the trade is “dollar on” after encouraging economic news from the U.S. housing sector and a drop in the euro after a very strangely timed speech by a member of the European Central Bank
The week ended with the recent market pattern intact—and in command. Negative news on the U.S. economy pushed the dollar—and associated commodities such as oil lower. European markets retreated on fears that a stronger euro would reduce export growth.
We got serious bad news on the inflation front today, May 14, as the Producer Price Index, which often signals changes in prices at the consumer level, dropped by 0.4% in April. The Federal Reserve clearly still has a lot of work to do on deflation/inflation.
Today’s pattern is a familiar one lately: Negative news on the U.S. economy sends the dollar lower, which pushes the euro higher, which leads to downward pressure on European stocks on fears that a stronger euro will hurt European exports
The Standard & Poor’s 500 is up 1.19% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 1.46% as of 10:30 a.m. New York time on news that the U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs in the last month
It could have been worse is about the best that I can say for the initial report on first quarter U.S. GDP announced this morning. According to what is called the advance estimate, the U.S. economy grew by just 0.2%
