Bond-market recession gauge plunges to triple digits below zero on way to fresh four-decade milestone

One of the bond market’s most reliable gauges of impending U.S. recessions plunged further below zero into triple-digit negative territory on Tuesday after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell point...

Asian markets slide ahead of U.S. inflation update

BEIJING — Asian stock markets sank Monday ahead of a U.S. inflation update that traders worry might lead to more interest rate hikes. The Nikkei 225 NIK, -1.06% in Tokyo sank 1% while the Shanghai Com...

Jobs report tells markets what Fed chairman Powell tried to tell them

Oh dear. A lot of investors just learned again, the hard way, the old rule: When someone tries to tell you something about themselves, listen. On Wednesday afternoon Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Po...

Fed set to deliver quarter-point rate hike along with ‘one last hawkish sting in the tail’

The Federal Reserve will downshift to a 25 basis point rise in its policy interest rate at their upcoming interest-rate meeting and will work overtime to make sure that the market doesn’t get the idea...

Here are potential impacts of China’s reopening on markets, Goldman Sachs says

China, the world’s second-largest economy behind the U.S., is set to reopen in just a few days and one major Wall Street firm has boiled down the likely impact on financial markets. In a note released...

The U.S. dollar surrendered its status as the world’s premier safe haven in Q4. Here’s how.

The U.S. dollar’s status as one of the few dependable safe havens for investors during this year’s market mayhem started to erode during the fourth quarter, even as the greenback posted its biggest ye...

U.S. stock futures fall as Chinese protests rattle markets, oil hits 2022 low

U.S. stock-index futures sank Sunday night, as Asian markets fell following widespread public demonstrations in China and as oil prices hit a 2022 low. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00, -0.49...

Fed’s Waller says market has overreacted to consumer inflation data: ‘We’ve got a long, long way to go’

Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller said Sunday that financial markets seem to have overreacted to the softer-than-expected October consumer price inflation data last week. “It was just one data p...

U.S. Treasury says currency-market intervention should be reserved for ‘very exceptional circumstances’ in response to Japan’s September move

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday said it expects currency-market interventions, like Japan’s in September, should be reserved for exceptional circumstances, as it kept Tokyo on a list of partn...

Another jumbo Fed rate hike is expected next week — and then life gets difficult for Powell

First the easy part. Economists widely expect Federal Reserve monetary-policy makers to approve a fourth straight jumbo interest-rate rise at its meeting next week. A hike of three-quarters of a perce...

Fed’s benchmark interest rate may peak above 5% after Sept inflation data, some economists think

When the Federal Reserve started to raise its benchmark policy interest rate by super-sized 0.75 percentage points in June this year, a few Fed officials and private sector economists talked about how...

Fed’s Mester says there’s been no progress on inflation, so interest rates need to move higher

With little or no progress made on bringing inflation down, the Federal Reserve needs to continue raising interest rates, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said Tuesday. “At some point, you know,...

Bernanke says Fed shouldn’t use interest rates to ‘fine-tune’ financial stability risks

The Federal Reserve shouldn’t use its interest-rate policy to “fine-tune” financial stability risks, said former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on Monday. Speaking to reporters at the Brookings Institution...

Fed’s Williams sees steep decline in inflation ahead

Cooling global demand and steady improvements in supply should result in falling rates of inflation for goods over the next year, New York Fed President John Williams said Monday. “These factors shoul...

Forget the 4% retirement spending rule. How do you feel about 1.9%?

Retirees and near-retirees have known for some time that the famed 4% rule needs to be revised downwards. But by how much? Would you believe 1.9%? That’s the conclusion of new research that replicates...

‘Painfully slow capitulation’: Why investors keep getting inflation wrong

A brutal third quarter in financial markets came to a close on Friday and one thing is overwhelmingly clear: Inflation is the single most important factor driving asset valuations right now and yet fe...

U.S. stock futures dip, dollar rises as Italian election results add to uncertainty

U.S. stock-index futures fell late Sunday, suggesting losses Monday, as the projected victory of a far-right party in Italy added to uncertainties about rising interest rates and recession fears. Afte...

Fed approves third large interest rate hike and signals more before year-end

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday stepped up its aggressive fight against high inflation by agreeing to the third straight super-sized increase in interest rates and signaling more big hikes before the...

4 things to watch when the Fed delivers its rate-hike decision

The Federal Reserve is raising rates on Wednesday. That much is certain. Beyond that, there are weighty questions about whether the central bank’s efforts to bring down inflation can succeed without c...

U.S. Treasury recommends exploring creation of a digital dollar

The Biden administration is moving one step closer to developing a central bank digital currency, known as the digital dollar, saying it would help reinforce the U.S. role as a leader in the world fin...

Any doubt Fed will raise rates by 75 basis points next week is gone after hot U.S. inflation data

Any doubt that the Federal Reserve will raise its its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage point next week is gone, economists said, following the hot U.S. consumer price inflation data for Augu...

Why the ECB’s jumbo rate hike isn’t helping the beaten-down euro

The European Central Bank went big on Thursday, delivering a historically outsize 75 basis-point interest rate increase in its effort to get a grip on record inflation. Yet the euro, after a brief bou...

British pound seen trading near parity with the dollar, economists say, as selloff takes Wall Street by surprise

It’s a notion once thought impossible. As the British pound trades at its weakest level against the dollar in more than two years on Friday, some economists expect it could close in on parity with the...

Shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet sheet is not likely to be a benign process, new Jackson Hole study warns

“If the past repeats, the shrinking of the central bank’s balance sheet is not likely to be an entirely benign process and will require careful monitoring of the banking sector’s on-and off-balance sh...

The Fed isn’t pivoting. Why were stock investors the last to know?

After Friday’s brutal session for stocks, it appears equities were the last asset class to accept the notion that the Federal Reserve likely won’t be pivoting to a less aggressive monetary policy stan...

U.S. dollar is now slicing through key technical levels ‘like a hot knife in butter’

The U.S. dollar is back on the upswing and headed toward the year-to-date highs seen in mid-July following a period of relative dormancy over the past month as investors pulled back on expectations of...

Don’t be fooled by a drop in U.S. headline inflation. Markets will be attuned to another figure on Wednesday.

Traders, investors and economists are all counting on Wednesday’s consumer-price index report to show a decline in the annual headline U.S. inflation rate for July. But there’s another figure buried i...

Alibaba shares keep sliding in Hong Kong following delisting threat from SEC

Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. continued to sink overnight, after U.S. regulators last week added the e-commerce giant to a list of Chinese-owned companies that could be delist...

Fed can’t stop hiking interest rates even if there is a recession, former top central banker says

The Federal Reserve has to emulate Mario Draghi and do “whatever it takes” to bring inflation down and that means continuing to raise interest rates even if there is a recession, said former Richmond ...

Powell says U.S. economy can handle the additional rate hikes that are coming

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday pushed back against economists who argue that aggressive Fed interest-rate hikes have increased the odds of a recession or hard landing for the U.S....

Bitcoin’s nosedive through the $20,000 mark is a Minsky Moment for crypto: ‘Psychologically for a lot of people, this is galling’

Is bitcoin BTCUSD, +4.03% facing a breaking point? That’s what some investors, acolytes and otherwise, might be contemplating, as the cryptocurrency’s descent accelerates over the weekend. The world’s...