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
One of the best experiences I’ve had in my investment career was being partner and co-portfolio manager with Raji Khabbaz. He’s a fantastic stock-picker and the two of us spent the better part of a decade discussing and debating investment ideas. Early in 2020, we spent a lot of time talking about Covid, trying to … 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
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
This was a big week for people who follow macroeconomic news. The Federal Reserve kept rates and the dot plot unchanged, but the press release was carefully worded to be opaque. We’ll explain why. After more than a decade of near and even below-zero interest rates at the Bank of Japan, they finally responded to … Read more
Very little that’s new and of interest from Powell’s press conference. The highlights: – Talked about starting to taper quantitative tightening (QT). Said the plan is to get to the same level, but more slowly. – Lots of talk about the strong employment situation. Regular DKI readers know most new jobs are in government. The … Read more
