Like the mother of a bride reviewing flower arrangements and fretting that a brilliantly sunny day could be marred by dark clouds hidden just beyond the horizon, pundits have been parsing the exceptional year-to-date performance of U.S. stock markets and fussing over the future. It’s true. U.S. stock markets look like they may be headed… Click for more / Podcast Player>
Do world stock markets believe Congress is just offering up some Halloween excitement? Last week, they responded to the government shutdown in the United States and the possibility the U.S. might default on its debt for the first time ever with the bravado of teenagers standing in line for a haunted house. Markets around the… Click for more / Podcast Player>
It was like watching a game of telephone where one child speaks into another child’s ear and that child speaks into another child’s ear and, by the time the last child repeats the original statement, it has transformed into something completely different. Chairman Ben Bernanke stepped up to the microphone at the press conference after… Click for more / Podcast Player>
Like a funhouse mirror, investors’ concerns about whether and when the Federal Reserve will begin to end its quantitative easing program contorted market responses to economic news last week. Unexceptional economic reports were treated as good news and pushed stock markets higher; strong economic reports were treated as bad news and pushed stock markets lower.… Click for more / Podcast Player>
The Fed will taper… the Fed will not… the Fed will taper… the Fed will not… Last week, investors and traders obsessed about the Federal Reserve and the possibility it might begin to end its quantitative easing program. The Fed began its first round of quantitative easing during the financial crisis in an effort to… Click for more / Podcast Player>
Last week, the term ‘Easy Money’ conjured both comedian Rodney Dangerfield and the U.S. Federal Reserve, and no one was certain how much respect either one should get. The Fed accidentally e-mailed its market-moving Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting minutes to congressional staffers and trade lobbyists on Tuesday at 2 p.m. The minutes weren’t… Click for more / Podcast Player>