Today's topics include the Fed's tightening cycle, bitcoin's bear market, the history of the Fed going too far too fast, moving on from LIBOR, trade tensions mentioned in FOMC minutes and emerging market currencies.
February's volatility may have taken some wind out of the sails of stock bulls, but bullish sentiment is slowly gaining momentum once again.
Central bank balance sheets continue to shrink, but a large degree of this can be explained by the stronger dollar.
At each step in the Fed's normalization process, 60% of the reduction was to come via Treasuries and the other 40% via MBS. To date, the Fed is $50 billion short of their stated goal.
A look at the size of world stock markets
An updated look at high yield ETFs
An updated look at investment grade ETFs
A look at commodity total returns this year
A look at bond returns since the beginning of 2018
A look at stock total returns in 2018
Emerging markets have broken out to heightened levels of uncertainty regarding central bank actions and currency returns. We believe ulta-low concern from the FOMC, ECB, and BoJ will not last, meaning U.S. 10-year yields could very well make a return to sub 3.00% in the near-term.