Managing Equity and Markets

We have an extremely busy week ahead of us. We hear from a lot of Fed members and receive two key inflation reports: the CPI and PPI.Right now, the markets are expecting a CPI reading of 0.1% (down from 0.4% from the previous month) with a core (excluding food and energy) reading of 0.3%, unchang...

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) decreased last week to 7.61% from 7.86% Applications to refinance a home loan increased 2% for the week and were 7% lower than the same week one year ago. Mortgage rates saw the b...

Finally, we see some positive market reaction to the Fed's policy meeting. Rates have come down over half of a point following last Wednesday's announcement. A week ago rates were over 8% for a 30 yr Fixed and as of last Friday, they dropped to below 7.4%. Rates also saw some easing last Friday w...

As we enter the last two months of the year, we are spending ourselves personally and politically into unsustainable debt.Moving forward. PCE reports (Personal consumption expenditures)came out and core PCE (the Fed's preferred inflation gauge) hit the lowest year-over-year level in over 2 years....

This week we get some housing data but all eyes will be on Friday's PCE inflation report. This report/method is the Fed's preferred measurement of inflation and it is the last report of any significance before the Fed's policy meeting next week. The Fed meeting starts Tuesday and commences Wednes...

We had PPI (producers price index) and CPI (consumer price index) numbers come out last week. The store for both: inflation ticked up but core inflation (excludes food and energy) came in at expectations. The volatile food and energy sectors, especially energy, pushed the indexes higher. One can ...

The big story of last week was the release of the PCE - (personal consumption expenditures) the Fed's preferred inflation gauge. More specifically, the Fed follows Core PCE which excludes food and energy (they claim that there are too many global variables that influence energy prices, such as oi...

As Congress continues to negotiate appropriations bills and/or a continuing resolution to fund the United States government for FY 2024, Federal agencies are preparing for the possibility of a government shutdown when the current appropriations expire in just two weeks on Saturday, September 30. ...

The Fed paused rate hikes, as the markets were expecting. The markets were hung up on Fed Chairman Powell's speech where he indicated that rates would be higher for longer than originally anticipated. The market originally priced in a rate cut in Q2 of next year but now they don't think there wi...

We had a volatile week with renewed fears that the Fed will continue its rate hikes. On Thursday, initial jobless claims came in lower than expected (216k actual vs the 229k estimate). The labor market data has been resilient in the face of inflation and higher rates. As I’ve mentioned before, th...