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During the last Fed rate raising cycle, it took the Federal Reserve five years to raise the fed funds rate to 2.50%. The Fed kept rates far too low for far too long and now we are dealing with the consequences. Both fiscal and monetary policy have been highly inflationary, and we are ...
Global central banks continue to warn that COVID, and other issues, persist. Traders seek some clarity and understanding of what’s going to happen next. In our opinion, the extended demands relating to the superheated reflation of the post-COVID economy set off an explosive inf...
Prior to last week's nasty sell-off, commodity stocks have been monster winners in 2022. Anecdotally, I am reading too many bullish commodity articles, perhaps a sign of a top. The elephant in the room is the war in Ukraine, which arguably caused the big blow-off top. Absent this horr...
Only one major asset was up last week: REITs. There were some negative developments that might explain the selling. With the drop in commodities and fears about the impact of the China slowdown, the immediate effect should be for inflation and growth expectations to moderate. We didn&...
The invasion of Ukraine is an inflationary shock to an already inflationary system. The International Energy Agency has warned that the impact on oil supply will peak only from May onwards. Since the war broke out, core government bonds have suffered sustained price declines unsee...
When reviewing the current state of the global economy and investment markets, we recommend focusing on market signals and weeding out market noise. While decelerating from the pace of 2021, U.S. economic growth is expected to remain positive in 2022, pending further unexpected inflat...
With consumer price inflation now approaching double-digit territory, the bond market is beginning to catch on. The dollar is benefiting mainly from its safe-haven appeal. Inflation expectations have indeed risen and now stand at a historical high (recall that TIPS only came into ...
The Fed has decided to go from super-easy money to quickly tightening monetary policy, which is causing a spike in Treasury yields that looks dangerous to me. Treasury yields have nearly doubled since the Omicron panic in late November, touching 2.73% on Friday. They are flirting with...
The broader equity categories turned in negative results in Q1. U.S. large-cap stocks, as measured by the S&P 500 Index, held up the best at a decline of 4.6%. Bonds performed worse than many of the equity categories, despite typically being viewed as a safe haven investment. In t...
Does the yield curve inversion cause a recession or does it just provide a signal? Is the inversion only about expected future monetary policy? Do other factors also influence the shape of the curve, and if so, can we disentangle the various factors? There is a lot that we don’...