Tag: FED

Today's Video Update: Let's Face It, Bernanke Is A Wimp

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Hello traders everywhere! Adam Hewison here, President of INO.com and Co-creator of MarketClub, with your mid-day market update for Wednesday, the 17th of July.

Let's Face It, Bernanke Is A Wimp
To be fair to Fed chairman Bernanke, he is human and like all humans, he is not perfect. His weakness right now is he just wants to get through the rest of his term, which ends on the 14th of January 2014, and not rock the boat. I think if anyone has said that the QE program (yeah, printing money), now in it's fourth year, would take this long nobody would have believed it, including chairman Bernanke.

The reality is, QE looks like a trade that has gone bad and nobody wants to admit it. It was a bad bet (trade) the Fed made and they all have egg on their faces, but nobody from the Fed is ever going to say they made a mistake with the QE program, including Chairman Bernanke. Like I mentioned earlier, humans are known to make mistakes. Continue reading "Today's Video Update: Let's Face It, Bernanke Is A Wimp" →

Rates of Interest

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As the 10-year to T-bill yield curve chart makes clear, we are not in Kansas anymore.  We are in Wonderland and as you can see, in Wonderland interest rates and their interrelationships are at the center of events.

tnx.irx

Last week the bullish case reasserted itself across financial markets, but to argue that policy makers are doing anything better than pumping future distortions into the system is crazy talk along the lines of 'the world is flat' or… ‘the above chart is flat’.

Last week Ben Bernanke clarified for people that yes indeed the Fed will eventually taper its QE bond buying operation while making clear that Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) will remain as is.  I think that the average market participant is starting to settle in and get comfortable with the terms of our 'Taper to Carry'(T2C) plan, which sees the banks benefiting from borrowing short and lending longer. Continue reading "Rates of Interest" →

Taper to Carry … a Logical Chain

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Below is the opening segment of this week's edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole (NFTRH 246).  My friend’s request for a 'simple' road map ended up a bit wordy, but I think the chain is logical.

Mail from a friend:  "I think your taper-to-carry idea has legs, but I’d really appreciate it if you went over the basic theory and how you see the dots connecting, if you decide there’s space and time in this weekend's edition at least. What I’d really want is a simple road map, the logical chain if you will. Nothing fancy, just the way it may (repeat may) play out and what its consequences might be."

When this request came in I had already been thinking about trying to put this all together in a logical sequence since 'T2C' was graduated to an actual plan from a thesis last week.

The idea was first introduced in NFTRH 241 on June 2, which was the week that the BKX-SPX ratio broke out to the upside and long-term Treasury bond yields broke up from bottoming patterns.  In the ensuing 5 weeks the macro fundamentals and technicals have only become firmer in support of T2C. Continue reading "Taper to Carry … a Logical Chain" →

3 Investments For When The Gold Sell-Off Ends

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By: David Sterman of Street Authority

As 2012 came to a close, investors increasingly questioned the wisdom of owning gold or gold-related stocks and funds. After all, a commodity known as an inflation hedge is of dubious value when inflation is nonexistent. And for investors who still expected the Federal Reserve's aggressive stimulus efforts to eventually fuel inflation, patience was starting to wear thin.

What began as a steady exodus out of gold in the winter morphed into something a lot more dramatic this spring. In the past few months, gold has endured a pair of scary plunges that has pushed even its most ardent supporters to the sidelines. Gold prices now sit at their lowest levels in nearly three years. Continue reading "3 Investments For When The Gold Sell-Off Ends" →

Stocks edge lower as investors wait on Fed

Posted on by The INO.com Team

The stock market is waiting on the Fed.

Major indexes drifted lower in midday trading Wednesday as traders wondered what the Federal Reserve will say about the U.S. economy and the central bank's huge stimulus program this afternoon.

The U.S. central bank will release its latest policy update at 2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time and Bernanke will speak at a press conference thirty minutes later. Comments by Bernanke last month suggesting the central bank may soon ease that support unsettled investors and caused this year's rally in stocks to stall.

"All eyes are on Bernanke and markets are being held hostage until he speaks," said Joseph Tanious, Global Market Strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds.

The Fed has been buying $85 billion of bonds a month to support an economy that is still struggling to grow faster following the Great Recession.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 19 points, or 0.1 percent, to 15,298 as of 12 p.m. Eastern Daylight time. Continue reading "Stocks edge lower as investors wait on Fed" →