Sept. 10, 2022 5:30 am ET Listen to article (2 minutes) A rally in technology shares helped the stock market snap a three-week losing streak. There are already signs that reprieve may be short lived. ...
Tag: Monetary Policy
Quantitative Tightening Is About to Ramp Up. What It Means for Markets.
The Federal Reserve now owns about a third of both the Treasury and mortgage-backed-securities markets as a result of its emergency asset-buying to prop up the U.S. economy during the Covid-19 pandemi...
2-year Treasury yield rises to highest level since 2007
Treasury yields rose on Friday, with the two-year yield rising to its highest level since 2007 as Federal Reserve officials suggested the central bank would likely hike its benchmark rate by another 7...
Inflation Could Be Harder to Tame Than the Fed Anticipates
Text size Another 75-basis-point hike in the federal-funds target is looking very, very likely. Ting Shen/Bloomberg Market participants returned from their summer holidays apparently undaunted by the ...
Paul Volcker didn’t wait for inflation to get back to 2% before pivoting
Paul Volcker is back in the limelight after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell approvingly cited his interest rate-hiking flurry to tame inflation back in the 1970s. But what’s less talked about is t...
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...
Yellen pledges to target high-earning Americans in bid to keep U.S. finances on ‘sound footing’
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday pledged to pursue tax increases for high-earning Americans in a bid to keep U.S. finances sound, as she gave a speech in Michigan on the Biden administ...
Fed on Path for Another 0.75-Point Interest-Rate Lift After Powell’s Inflation Pledge
Updated Sept. 7, 2022 10:29 am ET Listen to article (2 minutes) The Federal Reserve appears to be on a path to raise interest rates by another 0.75 percentage point this month in the wake of Chairman ...
When It Pays to Have a Mortgage in Retirement—and When It Doesn’t
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‘Vulnerable time for the housing market’: Mortgage rates are now double what they were a year ago, and will weigh on house prices
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.66% as of Sept. 1, according to data released Thursday by Freddie Mac. That’s up 11 basis points from the previous week — one basis point is equal to one hun...
GameStop, Apple, Kroger, NIO, and Other Stocks for Investors to Watch This Week
Text size U.S. stock and bond markets will be closed on Monday for Labor Day. It’s a quiet week on the earnings calendar once investors return from the long weekend, but a few major economic-data rele...
Bonds Are in a Bear Market. How to Play What Happens Next.
Text size A shift in Federal Reserve monetary policy has helped ratchet up bond yields, hitting prices. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Red-hot inflation and rising interest rates have hammered the globa...
The Other Doomsday Scenario Looming Over Markets
By James Mackintosh Sept. 3, 2022 10:00 am ET Listen to article (2 minutes) Think inflation is the biggest threat to your investments? Perhaps not: One fund manager that successfully navigated the pas...
After a Brutal Bond Selloff, Opportunities Have Emerged for Income Investors
For many years, dividend stocks were one of the few places where investors could find decent yields in a world of ultralow rates. A 10-year Treasury bond was dealing out an emaciated 1.3% a year ago, ...
If you need one more reason why stocks will likely lose money in September, here it is.
Finally, investors have a good reason for why the U.S. stock market will suffer above-average volatility and below-average performance this month: It’s the Fed. I say “finally” because market analysts...
The Dollar Will Get Even Stronger. Why That Could Slam the Global Economy.
Even for mighty Microsoft , $595 million is a lot of money. That’s how much the software giant’s sales were reduced in the most recent quarter by the ever-stronger U.S. dollar. Indeed, a broad range o...
Economist predicts a ‘whopper’ of recession in 2023 — and that’s not necessarily due to higher interest rates
Financial markets investors worry the U.S. is on the brink of an economic downturn as central bankers in Jackson Hole reaffirmed their determination to raise interest rates to bring inflation under co...
Morgan Stanley warns this corner of the credit market could be first to implode as interest rates rise
Now that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has made it abundantly clear that the Fed has no plans to slow the pace of interest-rate hikes, some bond-market experts are warning that the most specu...
Fed chief Powell ‘did what he needed to do’ in Jackson Hole, Larry Summers says
“ ‘The Fed is positioned as well as it can be — given the credibility losses and mistakes that there have been — with these remarks to manage things going forward.’ ” — Larry Summers Former U.S. Treas...
A Martian Assesses The Great 1970s Inflation
At the Federal Reserve conference in Jackson Hole this week, all attention was on inflation. Chair Jerome Powell seemed to have moved the markets when his tight-money comments coincided with a 1000-po...
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...
‘It’s a remarkably uncertain time’: Redfin CEO warns of rapidly cooling housing market — says deals under contract are being cancelled
After a stellar two-year run, the housing market is sputtering as buyers pull back sharply. One real-estate chief said the market is indeed course-correcting, and it’s getting hard to make a deal as m...
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...
Interest Rates Are Going Up. These 11 Banks Will Benefit.
Text size Bank of America is among the lenders that RBC says are especially well positioned for the current environment. Dominick Reuter/AFP via Getty Images Bank stocks—one of the few immediate benef...
Opinion: The Federal Reserve’s Powell has a lot of explaining to do
The Federal Reserve runs a symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, every year. It’s a rite of passage for many in central banking, in monetary economics and for Fed-watching. Sometimes there is a key Fed ...
Financial markets are bracing for what could be a ‘very hawkish’ Jackson Hole speech by Fed’s Powell
Financial markets are bracing for Friday’s widely-anticipated Jackson Hole speech by Federal Reserve Jerome Powell and expecting that he’ll signal the continued need for aggressive interest-rate hikes...
Preferred stocks can offer hidden opportunities for dividend investors. Just look at this JPMorgan Chase example.
This is shaping up to be a brutal year for bank stocks. But a deeper look can highlight an opportunity for income-seeking investors to make money on banks’ preferred stocks. But the S&P 500 SPX, +...