Hurricanes Shouldn’t Affect Fed Policy At Meeting Next Week

European Junk Bonds Are Expensive There is a noticeable difference between the European high yield debt market and U.S. treasuries. High yield debt no longer has a high yield in Europe and America as European junk bond yields are close to the AAA rated U.S. debt. That’s because of relentless ECB corporate bond buying which…

1990s Bubble But In Reverse

Update On ECB Bond Buying A new milestone is about to be reached in the ECB’s bond buying program. There have now been 998 bonds bought by the ECB. You can see the effects in the chart below. The BB rated euro high yield bond index is now at almost the same yield as the…

AAPL Sends The Nasdaq Lower

Apple Sells Off The stock market ended Friday mixed as the Nasdaq was the biggest sore spot, falling 0.59%. As I highlighted in previous articles, Apple usually falls right before the unveiling of its new phone. The 1.63% decline on Friday added to the Nasdaq’s woes. The stock is now down 3.30% off its all-time…

Debt Ceiling Eliminated?

Debt Ceiling Issue Over For The Time Being There was yet another twist in the debt ceiling debate as President Trump’s meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer has led to an additional agreement. President Trump wants to eliminate the debt ceiling completely. This has been a talking point the progressives have used for years…

3 Month Debt Ceiling Increase

Trump-Pelosi-Schumer Deal On Wednesday, the stock market rallied slightly lowering the possibility of the first 3% selloff of the year occurring this week. Those who described the selloff on Tuesday as devastating because it was the worst day since August 17th look silly because a normal day wiped half of it away as the S&P…

Cohn Is Out Of The Running To Be The Next Fed Chair

Auto Sales Weak In Beige Book The Fed’s Beige Book report was released Wednesday. That’s where the Fed gives its update on how it sees the economy now and where it might be going in the future. The key term was that there is modest to moderate growth which Steve Liesman says means 2% growth.…

Q3 Earnings Estimates Fall – Debt Ceiling Issue In Focus

Only 4.9% YoY Earnings Growth Expected In Q3 The FactSet weekly earnings presentations resumed this week. As you can see from the chart below, the finalized metrics from the Q2 earnings season show there was a negative bias to every type of report which meant even firms that beat estimates fell. This action was reversed…

Stocks Sell-Off As Irma Looms

The stock market had a minor move lower on Tuesday in the first day back from the Labor Day weekend. This is the start of the weakest month of the year. For some reason, the North Korean threat is now being considered an issue again even though the market ignored the missile launch by trading…

ISM Manufacturing Report Signals 4.9% GDP Growth

In previous articles, we’ve discussed how emerging markets are outperforming America after several years of underperformance. Emerging markets usually have a lower PE multiple than America and developed markets because their capital markets aren’t as trusted and their political systems are more uncertain. Lately, there has been a silly narrative that because President Trump appears…

35% Chance Of A Debt Ceiling Crisis

Debt Ceiling Resolved Soon? Goldman Sachs lowered its odds of a government shutdown, caused by the debt ceiling not being raised, from 50% to 35%. These numbers are somewhat arbitrary because there’s no way of knowing the precise odds of a shutdown. This situation is like when analysts come up with price targets which include…