Market Overview

The latest retail sales report seems to have given Wall Street something to cheer about. Headlines touting resilience in consumer spending increased hopes of a “soft landing” boosting the stock...

The economy isn’t always decisive in US presidential elections, except when it is. Think Herbert Hoover in 1932 and George H.W. Bush in 1992. Each lost the presidency to a challenger primarily...

The S&P 500 ended the day up about 40 basis points yesterday, showing little reaction to the rising VIX, increased 1-month implied correlation indexes, a steeper yield curve, and a weakening US...

Volatility poked its way through the front door for a moment, but then quickly hit the road again. The growth scare over the first weekend of August feels like a memory today with stocks gaining back...

Profitable bond trading opportunities arise when your expectations about Fed policy differ from those of the market. Therefore, with the Fed seemingly embarking on a series of interest rate cuts, it...

The 10-year rate ended the day in a particularly interesting position, given its significance in the broader financial landscape. It closed at 3.81%, just above the August 5 close of 3.79%. The 3.8%...

Social media has become the place where many of us spend our time, share our lives and, increasingly, get our news. An estimated 12 billion combined hours are spent every day on these platforms,...

US recession risk appeared to ease in the wake of last week’s encouraging updates for retail sales and jobless claims. Will the better-than-expected numbers delay the widely expected rate cut that...

A lot can happen over the course of a week when it comes to the crowd’s fickle sentiment du jour on matters of recession. At this time a week ago the headlines warned that a contraction, if it hadn’t...

I was recently asked about the seemingly strong “economic growth” rate as the Federal Reserve prepares to start cutting rates. “If economic growth is so strong, as noted by the recent GDP report,...

Stocks kept rising because retail sales and jobless claims data were better than expected. This is the second week in a row that stocks have jumped after a good jobless claims report. I’m not sure if...

Last week, I wrote an article entitled “Reasons For A Crash.” And, I will let you in on a little secret – I actually wrote that title as a test. You see, I assumed that the great majority of those...

Stocks were mostly flat to slightly up yesterday, with the S&P 500 getting a boost in the last 10 minutes due to a big closing imbalance. Other than that, it was a pretty quiet day. The CPI...

It was only a few months ago (with the March CPI report in April) that I was talking about a ‘Potential Pony Situation’ in my podcast when, after an unsettling Core CPI, I pointed out that the Median...