<Click of graphic for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Junk-Bond Selloff Intensifies Rout reaches a third consecutive trading day and shares of some asset managers tumble Investors retreated from the U.S. junk-bond market for the third straight trading day and stocks of large asset managers were hit by heavy selling, a sign that… Continue reading Junk Bonds Tumble
Bloomberg Business – Here’s What the Fed Will Be Watching to See If Liftoff Worked On the eve of liftoff, the Federal Reserve must be feeling pretty good about the ability of its new tools to raise interest rates: Key money market rates are already floating obediently upward in anticipation of the U.S. central bank’s… Continue reading More On The Federal Reserve
Reuters.com – Janet Yellen: An orthodox economist for unorthodox times Janet Yellen is guiding the Federal Reserve towards its first rate rise in a decade armed with traditional economic models that some economists worry could fail her in a world of massive money printing and near zero rates. The 69-year-old economist argues the time is… Continue reading Trusting Janet Yellen
<Click on graphic for larger image> Bloomberg Business – Why Foreign Inflation Matters to Janet Yellen HSBC, Bank of America say global output gap will cap price pressures Janet Yellen may be about to discover that if all politics is local, all monetary policy is global. As her Federal Open Market Committee prepares to increase… Continue reading Foreign Inflation And The Federal Reserve
The Wall Street Journal – Banks Prep for Trading Influx, as Rate Rise Looms Many firms face test in how they handle fallout from Fed’s decision on whether to raise interest rates Some large U.S. banks are revamping short-term trading desks that have languished in recent years, anticipating that a Federal Reserve rate increase this… Continue reading Banks Prepare For The Rate Rise
<Click of graphic for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Junk Rated Stocks Flashing Same Signal as High-Yield Bond Market A basket of non-investment grade shares down by half in 2015 Energy, small-caps taking toll while tech giants buoy S&P 500 As one of the broadest share gauges, the S&P 500 has companies that span the credit… Continue reading Junk Rated Stocks And The High Yield Market
The Wall Street Journal – The Fed at the Brink After seven years of near-zero, financial markets are nervous. The big news in financial markets in recent weeks has been the return of anxiety, led by commodities, junk bonds and emerging markets. All of these markets saw historic highs during the Fed’s quantitative-easing, near-zero heyday.… Continue reading Why The Markets Are Nervous
Bloomberg Business – Yellen Consigning Stocks Fate to Earnings That Keep Falling It’s hard to know which would be worse for U.S. equity investors right now: a contraction in valuations, or if stocks were left to rely on earnings growth to push them higher. Both are likely outcomes of this week’s Federal Reserve meeting, where… Continue reading Investors To Rely On Earnings
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Why China Is Loosening the Yuan’s Ties to the Dollar Pledge to peg currency to a basket underscores challenges Beijing faces, as U.S. rates rise China’s new pledge to unpeg its currency from the U.S. dollar underscores a difficult fact for Beijing: Actions by… Continue reading More On The Yuan
MarketWatch.com – Caroline Baum: How Fed-watching devolved into a game of wordplay The central bank’s policy statements have gotten longer and more complex In this age of central bank transparency, “Fed watcher” has become an extinct species, a result of evolution through natural selection as well as the obsolete nature of the job. Arguably, the… Continue reading Understanding Fedspeak
The Financial Times – Fed interest rate rise: it’s the trajectory that counts For emerging markets, what happens this week will matter less than what follows That the Federal Reserve will finally, finally, start raising US interest rates this week is so widely anticipated at this point that the reaction from financial markets is likely… Continue reading How The Fed Affects Emerging Markets
<Click on chart for larger image> Bloomberg Business – Don’t Count on an Oil Rally If U.S. Crude Export Ban Is Lifted WTI-Brent differential is less than $2, limiting export profit U.S. exported more oil than some OPEC members this year Traders betting that U.S. crude prices will jump above those in the rest of… Continue reading Crude Oil