Last week, I pointed out that the Citi Inflation Surprise Index was turning up around the world. While one month doesn’t make a trend, what if the Fed is making a different kind of policy error? Instead of over-tightening into a recession, what if the U.S. economy achieves a soft landing or no landing and...
Mid-week market update: It was a hawkish pause. The Fed’s decided to leave rates unchanged, but in the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP), it acknowledged that the economy is strong than its June projections. More importantly, the Fed Funds target for the end of this year remains unchanged, indicating that FOMC members expect another quarter-point...
It’s finally happened. The monthly MACD of the NYSE Composite turned positive at the end of July. This has been a reliable long-term buy signal in the past. The sell rule in this model is a negative 14-month divergences. In the words of Ronald Reagan when he was negotiating an arms control treaty...
Mid-week market update: The market reaction to the FOMC decision was mostly a yawn. The Fed raised rates by a quarter-point, which was expected, and Powell refused to commit to further hikes while repeating his data dependency mantra. As a consequence, the S&P 500 was mostly unchanged from before the decision to after the close....
Ever since the softer-than-expected June CPI report, the Wall Street narrative has pivoted toward disinflation and a soft landing. The disinflationary trend had been building for some time and inflation has been surprising to the downside around the world. As a consequence, the markets have taken a risk-on tone in anticipation of less...
In many ways, politicians are worse than magazine covers as contrarian indicators. Magazine editors focus on an economic issue when it moves from page 20 to page 1 in the public’s mind. By that time, it’s been largely discounted by the market. Politicians are worse. They follow the trends raised by magazine editors and are...
Fed Chair Jerome Powell struck a hawkish tone at the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress last week, “The process of getting inflation back down to 2 percent has a long way to go”. While the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided to pause its pace of rate hikes at the latest meeting, he...
Mid-week market update: It's not easy to make a market comment on an FOMC day. Let's start by analyzing the Fed's projections. The latest Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) shows a stronger economy and tigher monetary policy in response to the revised projections. The Fed revised up its GDP projections for this year by...
Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade. The Trend...
Now that the debt ceiling drama is over, investors’ eyes are turning toward the Fed and the trajectory of monetary policy. The current Fed tightening cycle is one of the most aggressive in memory. After a series of staccato rate hikes, the Fed hinted that it was ready to pause. However, the recent stronger-than-expected April...
Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade. The Trend...
Now that the market has had over a week to absorb the implications of the last Fed rate decision and incoming data since the meeting, here is where we stand. The Fed made an important change in its statement that hinted it was preparing to pause interest rate increases. Even though the Fed raised...
Mid-week market update: As expected, The Fed raised rates by a quarter-point and hinted that it will pause rate hikes at the next meeting, but underlined its conviction that it will not cut this year. Fed Funds expectations are largely unchanged after the meeting. The market is expecting a pause and cuts later this year....
The main events in the coming week will be the interest rate decisions by Federal Reserve on Wednesday and the ECB on Thursday. Both are widely expected to raise rates. However, market expectations for the trajectory of the U.S. Fed Funds rate is a 25-basis-point hike at the May meeting, a pause, and rate cuts...
In case you missed it, the 10-year Treasury yield fell and broke a technical support level even as the 3-month T-Bill yield rose. This left the 10-year to 3-month yield spread inverted further, which has historically been a strong recession signal. The 10-year and 3-month Treasury yield spread has inverted before every...
It was a closely watched FOMC meeting. The Fed raised rates by a quarter-point, which was widely anticipated, and signaled that it would likely raise another quarter-point before it's done. It was interpreted as a dovish hike. The Fed also published a Summary of Economic Projections (SEP), also known as the "dot plot". In the...
Mid-week market update: Investors and traders have been waiting for the moment of the FOMC announcement and subsequent press conference. How does the Fed respond to the twin challenges of a banking John Authers highlighted analysis from Bespoke indicating the market was entering a period of extreme volatility in Fed Funds futures. The...
In response to the recent financial turmoil, Fed Funds futures is discounting a 25 bps hike at next week's FOMC meeting, followed by a brief peak and rapid rate cuts for the rest of the year. Are those market expectations realistic? How will the Fed navigate between the Scylla of inflation and Charybdis...
One of these cyclical indicators is not like the others. While many cyclical industries are in relative uptrends, which is a technical signal of economic expansion, the 2s10s yield curve is deeply inverted and shows few signs of steepening. This is one of those occasions when the stock market and bond markets disagree. ...
In addition to the hot January PCE print, the other surprise of last week was the upbeat flash PMI from S&P Global Market Intelligence (formerly IHS Markit) showing upside surprises from the G4 industrialized countries. Increasingly, the market narrative is shifting from a growth slowdown to no recession and continued growth. The markets are behaving...
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