LDSF News and Press, First Trust Low Duration Strategic Focus ETF From 09/23/19

President Trump's administration would like to achieve a “weak” dollar in order to spur on US exports and improve the US trade balance. This is the primary reason for the President's tirades against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. So far this year, the president is lo...

The BCI at 257.1is up from last week's downward revised 256.6, and remains below the previous high of this business cycle indicated by the BCIp of 91.9. However, the 6-month smoothed annualized growth BCIg at 10.2 is below last week’s downward revised 10.4. Both BCIp and BCIg are not si...

It's that D-word again. Deflation is knocking at the door of the global economy. But who is going to answer, and who is really at the door? (and so what??) In the following charts and paragraphs I will provide my take on the key drivers, the response, the ripple effects, and a base case scen...

The Chinese economic situation is unsustainable and could lead to a debt crisis, Kevin Caron, senior portfolio manager at Washington Crossing Advisors, told viewers of Real Vision’s Trade Ideas. Unusually for an emerging market economy, China has 50% of its GDP in investment an...

During what was variously described as a disastrous press conference on Wednesday, Jerome Powell said trade tensions nearly "boiled over" in May and June but "returned to a simmer" in July. The Fed Chair made a number of mistakes over the course of his press conference, and that was one of t...

After all of the hoopla surrounding what the Fed was going to do, or not going to do, the pronouncement has now been made. The Fed did several things, in actuality. First, it cut interest rates by one-quarter point, as was widely anticipated. This was their first rate cut since 2008 and it mar...

I've talked quite a bit in these pages about the extent to which 2019 has been a year defined by an epochal central bank pivot, which has reinvigorated the global hunt for yield to the benefit of risk assets. There was a time not so long ago (perhaps five years ago) when the vast majority o...

The Fed is in the blackout window ahead of the July FOMC, and mercifully so. As we saw on Thursday , the market is exceptionally sensitive to communications around the likely scope of the forthcoming rate cut (i.e., "Will it be 25 bp or 50?"). John Williams's fumbled effort to extoll the vi...

Is The Economy Still Slowing? With the S&P 500 ( S P500) pressing new all-time highs, you are probably asking yourself whether the economic cycle is still slowing. Although we all know that the stock market is not the economy, it is logical to link the two and question the direction of e...

What a time to be alive and trading. On Thursday, market participants were treated to what's been variously described as an "unprecedented event", when New York Fed President John Williams presented a speech called "Living Life Near the ZLB" only to come back hours later and "clarify" that i...