Today the Federal Open Market Committee raised the fed funds rate (upper bound) to 1% from 50bps. The most surprising element of the press conference was the Chairman dismissing that the committee is not “actively” considering a 75bps hike right now. This sent algos into...
The clear and present danger to the global economy is inflation because global central banks are starting to take aggressive actions to deal with what they now believe to be non-transitory inflation. The Fed funds futures curve is signaling a tightening campaign not seen since...
While many commentators scratched their heads at the Fed’s latest summary of economic projections (SEP), the market took its cue from Chairman Powell's suggestion the US economy can withstand a barrage of rate increases this year without negatively impacting growth. In addition to the SEP, the...
Since May 2020, the Chinese Yuan has defied the path of other emerging market currencies, strengthening by almost 12%. This has left it overvalued compared to other emerging market countries. While Yuan strength made sense in 2020 when the USD was weakening. It is curious that in...
Below we highlight a few takeaways from Fed Chair Jerome Powell's confirmation hearing today before the Senate Banking Committee, broken down by topic. -Focus on “less accommodative” moves -Powell made numerous statements indicating that COVID, though prevalent, will not be as pressing in policy decisions for...
A basic tautology that economists consider when thinking about monetary policy is the velocity of money. MV=PQ translates into Money*Velocity=Price*Quantity. Of course, price*quantity is nominal GDP while “M” is the money supply (for example, M2) while “V” is velocity, or the number of times the...
Since the March 23, 2020 low, when the Federal Reserve announced basically unlimited liquidity via a variety of programs, corporate spreads have narrowed, and the stock market has risen substantially. In the chart below, I overlay US investment grade spreads over the S&P 500 Index. The...
Despite the relief rally yesterday, financial conditions have tightened significantly in the last couple weeks. This likely explains why the Fed just made an emergency 50bps cut to the fed funds rate. The graph below highlights that the two main areas of weaker financial conditions...
The Federal Reserve is in the midst of an historic tightening cycle, and it has begun to impact the economy. The latest casualty is the decline in oil prices, which opens up a new set of possibilities in asset allocation. In this special report, we look at the...
Yesterday John Williams, one of the newest members of the Federal Open Market Committee, wrote an article titled “The Future Fortunes of R-star: Are They Really Rising?” where he summarized his views on real neutral interest rates. He began with a short definition: “R-star is what economists...
We have seen research that suggests that for each $800 billion in Fed asset purchases it equates to approximately a 100 bps reduction in the fed funds rate....
