ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in February, 2025? The bear market that scarred the landscape for builders returned. After January’s bear market, relief, the bear market is back and more deeply entrenched. The stocks and the housing data are even on the edge of a deeper malaise. On-going declines … Read more
In “Tariffs, structural change and monetary policy“, Bank of Canada governor Tim Macklem examined the potential fallout from economic warfare with the U.S. through tariffs. Macklem provided a dire outlook for the Canadian economy while at the same time sounding an optimistic tone for the potential of monetary policy to both prevent lasting inflationary impacts … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in January, 2025? The bear market that scarred the landscape for builders came to an end just ahead of an important December inflation report. Relief from that report combined with relief from a builder’s earnings report helped to seal the deal on the three … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in December, 2024? Suddenly, the housing market is mired in a broken narrative after a brief drop in bond yields created a (fake) boost in November. The weakness showed up in stubbornly high mortgage rates and the dour commentary from earnings reports. The data … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in November, 2024? October’s reckoning transformed into a rebound with a boost from a sharp drop in long-term interest rates. The partial recovery came just in time for the seasonal strength in the stocks of home builders. The housing data for October showed mixed … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in October, 2024? A reckoning that I anticipated finally came in the form of sharply lower prices for the shares of home builders. After resisting rising mortgage rates for a month, the stock market lost its appetite. Earnings have brought a dose of reality … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in September, 2024? Existing home sales fell into a deeper downturn while new home sales maintained an uptrend from recent troughs. Rate cuts are helping to bottom out sentiment for builders. However, great anticipation of a rate cut from the Federal Reserve gave way … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in August, 2024? Financial markets quickly threw out a major downgrade from Citigroup for the housing sector. Hopes for rate cuts from the Federal Reserve continued to impact both the data and stock prices. While the on-going decline in mortgage rates has failed to … Read more
Stock Market Commentary At the beginning of August, you might have looked uninformed predicting that the S&P 500 would end up printing its 4th straight monthly gain. At its lows, the index wiped out gains from the previous two months and almost reversed May as well. Now, the index hovers just below its all-time high … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Welcome to the start of the stock market’s three most dangerous months of the year. A weak jobs report for July helped to send market sentiment into a sharp reversal. The bad economic news suddenly turned the prospect of rate cuts into something to fear. These rate cut fears spun the market … Read more