Why The Fed Might Be OK With Higher Inflation In 2018

Neel Kashkari: Minneapolis Fed President Is Fine With 2.7% Inflation On the day of the release of the Beige Report which showed price pressures are strengthening as economic growth is steady, let’s review a comment Neel Kashkari made about inflation. Neel did a Q&A on Twitter. One of the questions asked was what level of…

Senate Votes 52-48 To Start The Vote On Tax Cuts

FANG Stocks Fall On Tax Cut Talks Wednesday’s stock market action was driven by the changes that will go into effect when the tax cuts are passed. The Russell 2000 was up 0.38% and the Dow was up 0.44% while the S&P 500 was down 0.04% and the Nasdaq was down 1.27%. As you can…

Stocks Don’t Do Well Following Quiet Years Like 2017

End Of The Yield Curve Flattening Period Treats Stocks Well In continuation with our discussion about what the flattening yield curve means for stocks, the chart below shows the historical movements in the S&P 500 when the yield curve falls below 60 basis points. Firstly, you can see that the time it takes to invert…

Senate Budget Committee Passes The Tax Bill 12-11

Tax Reform Pushes Stocks Higher The stock market had a huge day on Tuesday as the Dow had its 61st record high of 2017. The Dow was up 1.09% and the Russell 2000 was up 1.53%. The S&P 500 was up 0.98%. It has been above its 200-day moving average for 358 days which is the…

Bitcoin Is Like The Tech Bubble: It Could Run Higher

Bitcoin Is Skyrocketing The biggest story of the day, which was on most investors’ minds, was the rally in bitcoin. The fact that this was such a major story even though most people in finance don’t have a large stake in the currency shows how remarkable the rally has been. As you can see from…

Yield Curve Flattening Means Sell Utilities & Buy Energy

Yield Curve Flattening The biggest story in finance, besides the hyperbolic rise in bitcoin, is the flattening of the yield curve. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the yield curve is flattening because it generally flattens during expansions. The two reasons why it is a big story are because investors are hyper focused on when…

Inflation Picked Up In October

Inflation Picked Up The latest CPI report for October gives support to that prediction as we saw core CPI accelerate for the first time since January as you can see in the chart below. The CPI increased 0.1% month over month and 2% year over year. Core CPI was up 0.2% month over month and…

Is The Market At A Top?

Record Highs On Tuesday The stock market played to this year’s theme on Tuesday as the S&P 500 hit 2,600 for the first time, rallying 0.65%. The Dow had its 60th record high of the year which is 4th most records since 1910. The Russell 2000 rose 1.03% and the VIX fell 8.64% to 9.73. Tech led the market as…

Visiting The Bearish Narratives

Stocks Are Expensive The current market is expensive, but earnings momentum and global growth from the emerging markets are keeping the stock market up. The time the expansion has left is dwindling as the yield curve has been flattening lately. However, the last couple years of gains in a bull market are usually the highest,…

Passive Investing Is 38% Of The Market

Bitcoin Getting Larger But Not Safer In a previous article it was mentioned that with the recent excessive speculation in bitcoin, that bitcoin’s volatility since has been increasing after it went through a stretch of relative calmness. This aspect is important to review because in the past few years, bitcoin proponents have said that the…