The Federal Reserve completed its April meeting, and kept the fed funds rate unchanged. Your bullet points ahead of Chairman Powell’s 2:30PM press conference. The fed funds rate remains unchanged at 5.25% – 5.50%. Earlier this year, most market participants expected the Fed to cut by either the January meeting or the March one. … Read more
We saw a weak and overstated GDP print combined with a higher inflation metric. The conclusion is that absent government spending, we’re heading for stagflation. One problem: government spending is destroying value. Mish Shedlock warns that we can’t vote our way out of the problem. On the commercial real estate front, landlords are coming up … Read more
I’ll be doing a Twitter Space tomorrow on the Federal Open Market Committee. It’s hosted by Tracy Shuchart (@chigrl) and starts at 11am Eastern Time. Other guests include Andy Constan, Peter Boockvar, Neely Tamminga and Mike Green (@profplum99). Link here: https://twitter.com/chigrl/status/1784990681569608186 For those of you who don’t have the time, here’s your preview: “higher for … Read more
Today’s guest post is by Michael (Mish) Shedlock. He’s an economist and member of the DKI Board of Advisors. I’ve read and admired his work for years. The key points in his piece that follows is that no matter who wins the election in November, the US will continue to spend insane amounts of money, … Read more
This morning, we got the March Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report. This is the preferred inflation gauge of the Federal Reserve. The PCE was up .3% vs last month and 2.7% vs last year. This was above expectations of 2.6%. The Core PCE, which excludes food and energy, was up .3% vs last month and … Read more
The first estimate for 1Q GDP came out this morning. Growth of 1.6% was well below expectations of 2.2% with some economists expecting a much higher number. As usual, we’ll go through a couple of adjustments. DKI adjusts for change in private inventories because it reflects inventory stocking or de-stocking as opposed to actual economic … Read more
This was an exciting week for Bitcoin holders and hodlers as the fourth-ever halving took place on Friday. The American consumer got back to work spending ever more on goods and services. Some of that was inflation and some was more consumption. That same consumer is a bit overstretched and some have started paying fees … Read more
Highlighting this hilarious meme created by DKI subscriber, David from MA. We’re ready for higher rates! Thanks David!
This was a big week for connected events. The increase in the CPI was a surprise to the disinflation crowd that’s been screaming for lower interest rates for almost two years. Higher CPI leads to higher for longer interest rates which pushes up the dollar against the yen. That’s about to force the Bank of … Read more
