Friends
It was a pretty bad day for, well, basically everything. Stocks were down, bonds were down, gold was down, oil was down, Bitcoin was down. Last month’s Fed minutes simply confirmed what we have been hearing from Fed officials over the past week. Rates are going higher and quantitative tightening is about to begin. The Fed is fully committed to fighting inflation. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it too late? Will they overdo it and send the economy into a recession later this year or next? Are traders pricing all these headwinds correctly? Market participants know what the Fed does in these situations, they keep tightening until they break things. Given anyone who can fog a mirror at this point knows all these things (the negativity on the business news channels is at full alert), why are stocks and bonds where they sit today? I’ll hang up and listen.
As for today, by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 144 points to finish the day at 34,496. The S&P 500 was down 43 points to close at 4,481. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 315 points to close at 13,888. Gold was down $1 to trade at $1,926 per ounce, while oil was down $4.66 to trade at $97.30 per barrel WTI.
We saw intraday volatility reemerge today. Given the conditions, volatility is the word of the day, well actually the word of the year.
Have a nice evening everyone.
