Refreshing Snippets
Stock Market Volatility and Fed Rate Cuts
What’s driving this decline and why such a departure from the first quarter? The simple answer is… investors’ changing expectations for Fed interest rate cuts.
Government Debt Ceiling Deja Vu
Debt ceiling talks and ramifications for investors and the U.S. government are the top news stories of the day. Bond and stock markets have been volatile as the June 1st date deadline (when the government runs out of money) quickly approaches.
August CPI Data - Why the Sell-Off?
Why would a small 0.1% increase in CPI cause such a big sell-off in the markets?
The answer: because analysts were expecting a 0.1% decline for August instead of an increase (albeit a small one at that). An increase of 0.1% indicates that inflation remains high from a year-over-year perspective (at 8.3%) and may not be moderating as hoped.
The Fed Gets What It Wants
It's well known that two emotions drive market prices: greed and fear...and fear is at the helm right now. There are more sellers than buyers, causing security prices to decline, but if you stand back and look at the bigger picture, this is exactly what the Fed wants. The Fed is managing inflation by affecting consumer demand.
The Ukraine Invasion and the Markets
The news about the invasion of Ukraine is distressing on a humanitarian level and unsettling when thinking about the impact of increased volatility on investment portfolios. Let's break it down and look at some of the threads we're tracking.