The Wall Street Journal – U.S. Economy Lost 33,000 Jobs in September The Labor Department Friday reported the first decline in U.S. nonfarm payrolls in seven years, suggesting the economy took a hit from hurricanes in Florida and Texas. In many ways, this is a pretty lousy report, but the market is treating it like a… Continue reading Employment In Pictures
Bloomberg – Tim Duy: Fed Officials Reveal Their True Inflation Attitudes The central bank’s commitment to gradualism is cracking, and might not last past the December meeting. And it might be not sufficient to explicitly allow for an overshoot of inflation; policy makers might need to actually target inflation in excess of 2 percent to prove… Continue reading The Fed Has Less Room for Additional Hikes Due to Low Inflation
Bloomberg – Treasuries Doomsday? Wall Street’s New Guide to Bond Trading Without margin of safety, bears see big selloff on Fed unwind Don’t expect the U.S. Treasury market to go back to “normal” once the Federal Reserve starts reducing its crisis-era debt investments. At least that’s the message from the likes of Credit Suisse, Goldman… Continue reading Bond Investors Comfortably Numb
OilPrice.com – The Permian Boom Is Coming To An End It’s the latest piece of evidence to suggest that “Permania” might be easing. The hottest shale basin on the planet has suffered from rising costs as too many companies pour money into West Texas. The crowded field has pushed up the price of land, labor, oilfield… Continue reading U.S. Shale Oil Managing Expectations
Bloomberg Markets – The One Fed Choice That Would Really Spook The Bond Market In the eyes of Rick Rieder, the global chief investment officer of fixed-income at BlackRock Inc., the bond market knows that the Federal Reserve is bigger than just one person. Unless that person happens to be John Taylor. As speculation swirls about whom… Continue reading The Race For The Fed Chair
Bloomberg View – The Fed Needs a New Party Line on Inflation After a while, continual “special factors” become a deflationary trend in a world where production capacity and labor exceed demand. Yes, she admitted, the Fed’s 2 percent target for personal consumption expenditures inflation, the central bank’s favorite measure, has been continually undershot, but “the… Continue reading More On The Fed’s Confusion About Inflation
The Wall Street Journal – Randal Quarles, Trump’s First Fed Nominee, Wins Senate Approval Former Treasury Department official is expected to lead a deregulatory agenda The Senate on Thursday approved Randal Quarles for a key banking oversight post on the Federal Reserve Board, marking President Donald Trump’s first imprint on the central bank and his first… Continue reading Randal Quarles Is Now The Fed’s Key Bank Regulator
Bloomberg Gadfly – Nir Kaissar: It’s Hard to Scale the Peak of ETF Mountain Granted, mutual funds still have more money than ETFs, but ETFs are quickly gaining ground. According to Morningstar Direct, ETFs gathered $818 billion since 2015 through August, compared with just $114 billion for open-end mutual funds. The number of ETFs chasing those… Continue reading Investors Pouring Money Into ETFs
The Economist – The bull market in everything: Asset prices are high across the board. Is it time to worry? With ultra-loose monetary policy coming to an end, it is best to tread carefully Dear assets are hardly the product of euphoria. No one would mistake the bloodless run-up in global stockmarkets, credit and property over… Continue reading Ringing The Bell At The Top???
The Financial Times – Is the “globalisation –> disinflation” thesis bunk? None of this is to say that changes in the exchange rate are irrelevant. An expensive currency encourages people to spend more on goods and services from abroad than those produced domestically. That threatens longer-run productivity and employment by hollowing out the tradable sector, and… Continue reading Globalization And Inflation
The Wall Street Journal – Greg Ip Analysis: Why the Fed Won’t Stand in the Way of Trump’s Tax Cuts The Fed can’t affect taxes, spending or labor-market regulations, although its chairman can weigh in from the sidelines. The two might be inclined to attribute any pickup in growth next year to policies they have advocated… Continue reading The Fed’s Role In Potential Tax Cuts
The Economist – Buttonwood: Mergers and acquisitions often disappoint Bosses and investment bankers love them; shareholders tend to rue them S&P Global Market Intelligence, a research arm of the ratings agency, has updated a study on the impact of deals on the acquiring company’s share price. The study looked at M&A deals done by listed companies… Continue reading Tracking The Stock Performance Of M&A Deals