Market Overview

Markets are highly confident that the Federal Reserve will announce another cut in interest rates at the next policy meeting on Nov. 7, two days after the election. The uncertainty is whether the cut...

Consumer confidence has been relatively depressed for the past couple of years according to the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) and Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI), which are based on surveys...

The odds continue to look favorable that the US will dodge an NBER-defined recession through the end of the third quarter. Q4 still looks more challenging, but that’s guesswork at this point. By...

In our recent two-part series on the yield curve (Part One  Part Two) we discussed the four predominant yield curve shifts and what they imply about economic activity and monetary...

I reviewed the spread on the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) yesterday. The white bars represent yesterday’s data, and the comparison is against the 180-day historical average. The spreads are...

Last week, the Federal Reserve made a significant move by cutting its overnight lending rate by 50 basis points. This marks the first rate cut since 2020, signaling the Fed is aggressively supporting...

So far, September isn't living up to its bad reputation for the stock market now that the S&P 500 and the DJIA are at record highs. At the start of the month, on September 2, we asked, "What...

From time to time, I like to point out errors that we make because we think in nominal space, or because we had 25 years of inflation being so low that we didn’t have to think about it very much. I...

As I have noted here for the past few months, the narrative surrounding generative AI has shifted dramatically. This is starting to lead to a shift in estimates of the major players’ potential...

This week will be relatively quiet in terms of economic data. The main events are Treasury auctions for 2-year, 5-year, and 7-year notes, scheduled around 1 PM Tuesday, Wednesday, and...

We've focused on three scenarios since the start of the decade: a 1920s-style Roaring 2020s, a reprise of the 1990s stock market meltup, and a rerun of That '70s Show with geopolitical shocks causing...

The news of the week is NOT the Fed cutting 50 bps - yes sure, that’s important but there is something much more relevant going on. The Chinese economy keeps imploding from within. And we should pay...

Last week, the Fed vice chair for supervision, Michael Barr, announced that the regulator had cut a proposed increase to capital requirements for the largest US banks by more than half. According to...

US economic activity remains on track to post a softer but still-solid growth rate in next month’s official GDP report for the third quarter. The analysis is based on the median estimate from several...