On February 5th, Jerome ‘Jay’ Powell was sworn in as the 16th Chairman of the Federal Reserve, following Janet Yellen, who served one term starting in 2014. Powell’s first day on the job was the sharpest day of the recent stock market selloff, when the S&P 500 lost more than four percent. I don’t think that the market fell because of the new Fed Chair, but I have read a… Read More
Last week’s Daily Insight was a little long and a little technical, so today I am going to keep it short and sweet. The market appears to have shifted back into rally mode with concerns about inflation, rising bonds yields or volatility, seemingly falling by the wayside. At this point, this correction seems a lot like the last two, although as I said last week, it’s a little too early… Read More
While I think it’s far too early to say that the correction is over, the sharp rallies over the past two days are welcome signals that suggest the forced selling that characterized last week’s sharp daily losses may be over. My view of the recent market selloff has two components. First, as I outlined on last Monday, February 5th (click here for the article), I believe that the initial cause… Read More
The S&P 500 lost more than four percent, the largest single day loss for the index since August, 2011. The losses started out modestly through lunchtime, but accelerated sharply in the early afternoon. At one point, as seen in the Bloomberg screenshot below, the S&P 500 spiked higher, but then lost back everything that was earned in the final hour or so of trading. Although we don’t know exactly what… Read More
What the heck happened? Stocks were rolling along, picking up steam even, when all of a sudden, out of the blue, ‘POW!’, the index hit a wall. In reality though, while the move lower was a surprise, it wasn’t really all that surprising. It’s true that I couldn’t have told you the week before that stocks would have fallen sharply last week, but a move like this really isn’t out… Read More
