Weekly Market Update

Not that economic results have been driving markets much since the pandemic hit it’s even less likely as we get closer to the elections and investors start to enter that event into the trading calculus. It will still be the direction of the pandemic that will be calling most of the shots but as the…

Even though we had an FOMC meeting last week we are being inundated with Fed speak again with almost every FOMC member opining on the economy and US policy this week. The headliner, however, was Chair Powell paired with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin testifying before the House Financial Services Panel yesterday. They will repeat the performance…

Fed Speak and Home Sales Even though we just had an FOMC meeting last week we will be inundated with Fed speak again with almost every FOMC member opining on the economy and US policy. The headliner, however, will be Chair Powell paired with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin testifying before the House Financial Services Panel tomorrow…

It’s FOMC meeting day but before we learn what the Fed has in store for us (which we’ll talk more about below), we did get the August retail sales numbers and they reflect a note of caution that if fiscal stimulus continues to fade into the fall, does that risk a W-shaped bounce rather than…

FOMC Meeting & August Retail Sales The FOMC rate decision on Wednesday will be the highlight of the week, but with most economic reports posting decent numbers of late, it’s not likely the Fed will announce any new initiatives on Wednesday like quantifiable targets to guide reward guidance or longer duration quantitative easing purchases. Still,…

In addition to the jobs report last week the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey provides some additional labor market details. The issue is it’s always a month behind its more famous labor report sibling. In any event, the July report due later this morning is expected to show job openings totaling 6.00 million versus…

Will the Stock Selling Continue? With a two-day stock correction ending last week it will be interesting to see if the selling continues into this holiday-shortened week. It’s also a quiet period for the Fed before the September FOMC meeting so little in the way of Fed speak will be in the offing should the…

The August Employment Report is out and it came amazingly close to expectations finding 1.37 million jobs versus the 1.35 million median estimate. Despite the positive beat, the scope of the damage still to be repaired is daunting.   10.5 million jobs have been created  in the last four months versus 22.2 million jobs lost in…