ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Stock Market Commentary Good employment news came in the form of the May jobs report. The unemployment rate stayed flat at 3.6% while the U.S. economy added 390,000 jobs. Both the number of unemployed and the unemployment rate are essentially back to the pre-pandemic levels of February, 2020. The labor force participation rate remains 1.1% … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The latest bear market bounce was an even closer call than the last one. This time around, Apple Inc (AAPL) failed to lead the S&P 500 away from the brink. AAPL closed below its October, 2021 low the previous day and warned technicians that the stock’s leadership was failing. So when AAPL … Read more
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) was just about as bearish on the housing market as it allows itself to get. In its latest press release on the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI), the NAHB declared “…the housing market is now slowing.” The HMI plunged from 77 to 69 in a sign that … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Despite recent bouts of trading in or like a bear market, market breadth has somehow managed to avoid closing in oversold conditions. In fact, the last “official” oversold period was 518 trading days ago. Yet, since the NASDAQ topped out in November, market breadth has dropped into and out of oversold on … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary In “Marching Under the Shadow of Recession Fears – Housing Market Review” I spent some time discussing the impact of the Fed’s move to normalize monetary policy. That impact continues to ripple through the housing data. Yet, individual home builders are not yet reporting much impact from rising rates. They … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Trading extremes led to a snapback rally as expected. However, the rally was short-lived as bear market action quickly resumed. The stock market looks like it is on the way to oversold trading conditions as March closing lows failed to hold as support. Fear is palpable as traders and investors scramble to … Read more
I doubted the ability of Freddie Mac to forecast the housing market once. Never again. In the immediate wake of the pandemic, Freddie Mac insisted that housing would recover rapidly. I was highly skeptical. Freddie Mac turned out to be too conservative! Fast forward two years and Freddie Mac has delivered a surprisingly solid housing … Read more
In a blunt and direct discussion, Bank of Canada (BoC) Governor Tiff Macklem made a compelling case for fighting inflation by declaring that “the economy has entered this period of excess demand with considerable momentum and high inflation, and we are committed to getting inflation back to target.” To do so, the BoC hiked its … Read more
Two recent studies from the Federal Reserve say a lot about its core concerns for inflation. These studies were released back-to-back just one week following Fed Chair Jerome Powell confirming the new religion at the Fed for (aggressively) fighting inflation. Researchers at the St. Louis Federal Reserve identified housing services (aka rents) as a core … Read more
During the Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, a friend and I were convinced that the Federal Reserve’s extraordinary monetary measures would eventually create outsized inflationary pressures. We came up with a blog called “Inflation Watch” as a way to educate each other on price dynamics and to alert anyone else interested. The subsequent economic expansion came … Read more