April Market Insights: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been
Powell recently affirmed that we will see rate cuts this year, even if the timing is … well, uncertain. If rates do fall, it will mark the end of a monetary policy tightening regime that started out weird and never looked back.
March Market Insights: Viewing the Economy Using a Telescope, Microscope or Kaleidoscope?
Recent economic data can tell completely different stories depending on where you focus. But one point of view has been remarkably consistent this year: the market does not seem to care about any of it.
February Market Insights: Cracks in Our Booming Economy?
As goes January, so goes the year. That remains to be seen, but last month does have a twofold lesson for the year.
January Market Insights: Is Rate Relief in Sight?
The drama around the timing of the Federal Reserve’s first cuts to the key short-term interest rate continued in last few weeks of the old year and into the first week of the new year.
December Market Insights: Rates - Lower and Sooner?
A few weeks ago, with the narrative of rates being higher for longer taking firm hold, the December FOMC meeting would likely have been less of an attention-grabbing event. But that was last month.
November Market Insights: Powell on Rate Cuts? Nope, Let’s Pause
The Federal Reserve's November meeting went as the market expected: no change in rates. What wasn't expected was the October and early November rollercoaster of bond yields
October Market Insights: “High-Pressure Equilibrium” and a New Era of Uncertainty
The post-2008, pre-pandemic era of low rates, low inflation, and ever-expanding values is firmly in the rearview mirror. The term used by one regional Fed president for what we're seeing now is "high-pressure equilibrium," where low unemployment and positive growth co-exist in tension with inflation that is above the Fed’s long-term target of approximately 2%.
September Market Insights: A Raft of Reassuring Data - or Not?
For most of the summer, increasingly positive data releases fed into the market’s upbeat view of the economy. August challenged the market’s optimism.
August Market Insights: The Sunny Side of the Street?
The doom-and-gloom scenario of an all-but-inevitable recession seemed to be replaced by something that looked like optimism around the prospect of a soft landing.
July Market Insights: The Fed Takes a Micro-Holiday
The Fed finally hit "pause" on interest rate increases in June after fifteen months and ten consecutive rate hikes, and it’s become clear that it is only a brief pause.
June Market Insights: A Hot Labor Market Complicates the Fed’s Timeline
Throughout the month, the markets focused on the debt ceiling negotiations and the likely impact to government spending – or at least the increased uncertainty around what spending would be. At the end of the month, the FOMC minutes from the early May meeting were released.
May Market Insights: The End of a Fed Cycle?
The biggest news in the Fed’s statement after their meeting on May 3 was what it didn’t say.