Friends Despite constant turmoil stocks had a pretty good first quarter of 2023. The S&P 500 finished up nearly 7% while the Nasdaq was up a whopping 16%. Given the circumstances and the wild ride that the bond market was on in the first quarter, to me the...
Friends The bulls continue to hold the high ground with one day left before the end of the quarter. We suspected that this would be a quiet week, at least data wise, and for the most part it has been. We have noted the market’s resilience this month given that...
Friends Once again, as we wait for the coming recession to unfold, stocks continue to drift higher. Volume has been light the last few trading sessions, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that stocks continue to defy the common narrative. It is a quiet week...
Friends As the banking industry appears to be calming, stocks mainly moved higher again today. The calls for recession are deafening at this point, and understandably so, but stocks have been stubbornly resilient (for the bears taste) over the past few weeks. Bond...
Friends Another day and another bank in the news. Today it was Deutsche Bank the giant German Bank. But interestingly the market that is seeing the most volatility these days is the bond market not the stock market. Bonds continue to move all over the place with the...
Friends Not surprisingly the Fed raised the Fed Funds rate a quarter of a point today. The range now stands at 4.75%-5%. Also, not surprisingly the Fed is hinting that they will be watching closely the consequences of the bank tremors we have felt in the last couple...
Friends I have been asked several times in the last couple of days what I think the Fed will do tomorrow with regards to rates and messaging. I have felt since last week that the Fed “should” pause here simply because in my mind the banking/financial system is...
Friends Last weekend, government officials “implied” that deposits in U. S. banks, whatever amount, will be backed by the government. This weekend in the soap opera that is the banking industry we saw the shotgun wedding of Swiss giants UBS and Credit Suisse. In the...
Friends As we mentioned earlier in the week, after an event like we had with a couple of bank failures it is very likely that we will see heightened volatility in the markets. I mentioned that at least for a day market participants seemed to be calmed just a bit...
Friends Stocks tumbled at the open once again despite the Swiss “helping out” Credit Suisse overnight. The ECB raising key interest rates by a half of a point added to the anxiety in early trading. But after the bank stocks took another leg down in the morning,...
Friends Rumors of trouble at Credit Suisse, the large European Bank, helped fueled more selling in bank stocks and stocks in general, but the truth is that Credit Suisse has been a very dubious bank since the great financial crises a decade and a half ago....
Friends I hope you were able to join us for our zoom conference call today. For those who were not able to attend we’ve enclosed a link for you to view if you so wish. As for today in the markets, the CPI number came in about as expected. Year over year inflation is...
Friends As mentioned this morning, we will do a zoom conference call tomorrow morning to discuss all that has transpired in the last week in the financial markets. But first I will try to just touch on a couple of items. The government stepped up to back bank...
Friends Where do I start? The non-farm payroll number came in hotter than expected this morning with 311,000 jobs created in February vs. the 205,000 expected. But the unemployment rate rose from 3.4% to 3.6%, and the average hourly earnings month over...
Friends As the Fed has been bludgeoning the economy with interest rate hikes and quantitative tightening, market participants have been looking for signs that things are cracking. Today, a huge flair was fired into the air as banks that lend to venture capital firms...
