Fears of a sharp slowdown are getting the blame for the stock market’s renewed slide while also driving a retreat in Treasury yields. A look at a regional Fed bank’s closely followed economic-growth indicator may justify investor jitters, said a top Wall Street researcher. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model on Friday forecast … Read more
2022 is shaping up as a historic year for markets, including the world’s reserve currency. While the S&P 500 is headed for its worst first half in more than five decades, the dollar appreciated during the first six months of 2022 by the largest margin in history, according to some measures. The Federal Reserve’s decision … Read more
Investors and traders attempting to navigate one of the most treacherous periods in financial markets in years are all but sure to face more volatility during the second half of this year. One major reason is that few seem to be prepared for the risk that US inflation, already at an almost 41-year high of … Read more
Bear markets like to trick you into thinking they have come to an end. They do that by mounting explosive one-day rallies. Those jumps more often than not turn out to be traps that lure the gullible back into the market just as it’s about to turn down again. Bear markets constantly are playing Lucy … Read more
Mortgage rates continue to climb as the Federal Reserve seeks to tame unwieldy inflation. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.81% in the week ending June 23, edging up from 5.78% the week before, to Freddie Mac. This time last year, rates averaged 3.02%, and the last time rates were this high in the winter of … Read more
The last time the housing market suffered a major meltdown in 2006, it took the entire US economy with it. But history never follows the exact same script twice. The weakening housing market is undoubtedly going to hurt the economy. Single-family home construction fell to a 1 million annual pace rate in May from a … Read more
The Federal Reserve’s battle to get inflation down from a 40-year high likely means it will raise interest rates until the US economy slows, strategists at the BlackRock Investment Institute warned on Tuesday. “The Fed seems dead set on raising rates this year to levels that, in our view, would clearly slow the economy,” Jean … Read more
The US economy should continue to grow in the coming several months, said St. Louis Fed President James Bullard on Monday, playing down fear of a severe recession that some economists and market pros view as inevitable in the face of the central bank’s war against too-hot inflation. “On GDP growth, I think that the … Read more
