ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
The dollar put on another weak showing on Thursday as it struggles to maintain critical support at the 200-day moving average. If it were not for the Bank of Japan’s intervention to weaken the yen the previous day, it seems the dollar would be well on its way down through a technical breakdown. *Chart created … Read more
For most of this year, I have interpreted the Federal Reserve’s policy to maintain “exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period” as the equivalent of low rates for at least the next six months from each new confirmation. This interpretation came from a January interview with New York Federal Reserve … Read more
A catalyst for working off the market’s over-extended and over-bought conditions remains elusive. The Federal Reserve’s latest monetary policy statement essentially blessed the market’s stubborn “melt-up.” The statement did not provide the incremental “hawkishness” as I was expecting given last month’s surprise discount rate hike. In fact, this statement’s reference to low rates for an … Read more
(A version of this post also appears on Inflation Watch) The Federal Reserve essentially warned us in its most recent written testimony to the House of Representatives that part of its exit strategy from emergency monetary measures is to increase the spread between the funds rate and the discount rate. This evening, the Fed did … 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