ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
On Friday, Nightly Business Report’s Susie Gharib interviewed Thomas Hoenig, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Gharib focused on Hoenig’s objection to the latest Federal Reserve statement on monetary policy. Hoenig basically explained that he wants the Fed to adopt a flexible policy stance now that the economy appears to be recovering: … Read more
For those people counting down to the first rate hike from the Federal Reserve, New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley offered an interpretation of “extended period” for Susie Gharib of Nightly Business Report: “GHARIB: Bill, everybody wants to know what do you mean by extended period? Would you please define that for us? DUDLEY: … Read more
The dollar’s recent relief rally stalled out December 23 (see chart below), and December’s disappointing jobs report may have officially ended it. The apparent working thesis supporting the dollar’s relief rally has been an expectation that an imminent recovery in the labor market would motivate the Fed to raise interest rates sometime soon. December’s disappointing … Read more
(repost from January 4, 2010) Yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Atlanta, Georgia. In his speech titled “Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble,” Bernanke presented statistical (econometric) analyses to demonstrate that monetary policy contributed very little to the recent housing bubble in the U.S. … Read more
During recent re-confirmation hearings for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, U.S. Senator Jim Bunning – a frequent critic of the Federal Reserve – asked Bernanke several questions about gold prices. Bunning’s questions appear targeted at prodding Bernanke into acknowledging that inflation expectations are much higher than the Federal Reserve’s current estimation. Bunning also uses high … Read more
Good (or not as bad as expected) economic news has typically garnered selling in the U.S. dollar and buying in the stock market. On Friday, the good news that November’s monthly change in U.S. non-farm payrolls came in essentially flat sent the S&P 500 soaring as high as 1.7%. However, the dollar index also soared, … Read more
Probably one of the longest running jokes in the financial markets is the amount of time U.S. officials spend talking about their support for a strong dollar while taking no action to actually support a stronger currency. On Monday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made a rare contribution to the bluster by stating his own … Read more
The Wall Street Journal printed a trifecta of articles to day that seem to cry out for the dollar to lift its head out of the sludge. Coincidentally (or not), the dollar rallied for its biggest one-day gain in almost three weeks. In “Uncertainty May Help Dollar“, analysts remind us that the economic recovery remains … Read more
On Friday, Federal Reserve Governor wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal titled “The Fed’s Job Is Only Half Over.” In this piece, he suggested that while “…longer-term inflation expectations are stable, and economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal-funds rate for an extended period…prudent risk management indicates … Read more