The second-largest bank failure in U.S. history might help the Federal Reserve do its job of tightening credit and slowing the economy. To be sure, the sudden collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank unit ...
Tag: Up and Down Wall Street
Tech Carried the Stock Market. Now They’re Taking It Down With Them.
The prospect of still-higher short- and long-term interest rates produced the worst week for the S&P 500 index in the relatively young year, a drop of 2.67%, and the third straight down week for t...
Tech Carried This Upturn, and Now It’s Taking the Market Down With It
The prospect of still-higher short- and long-term interest rates produced the worst week for the S&P 500 index in the relatively young year, a drop of 2.67%, and the third straight down week for t...
Strong Economic Data Weaken the Case for Continued Stock Rally
The dash for trash has hit a speed bump. Stocks faltered again this past week as the early-year rally, led by rebounds in 2022’s speculative-grade losers, ran into resistance from higher expected inte...
Big Oil’s Big Paradox: Record Profits, Low Stock Valuations
Big Oil has never been more profitable, but it has hardly ever been a smaller part of the stock market. That’s enough to make industry executives feel unappreciated. “We’re grossly undervalued,” says ...
Job Numbers Keep Climbing, Sinking Chances of Rate Cuts
What did you know and when did you know it? If one were to pose that Watergate-era question to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, on the issue of whether he gets an advance peak at key economic d...
2 Natural-Gas Stocks to Play the Coming Rebound
The collapse in natural-gas prices in recent months has generated a fraction of the attention of the run-up of the first half of 2022. But it could dent 2023 profits industrywide—and dampen inflation ...
The Stock Market Is on a Tear. Don’t Ignore the Debt Ceiling.
It’s always fun until the bill comes due—and the bill always comes due. In fact, it’s coming due right about now. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Congress that the U.S. would hit its...
The Bulls’ Worst Recession Fear: There Won’t Be One
“There ain’t gonna be no recession,” Pierre Rinfret, an economist who once advised the Nixon administration, confidently declared in December 1969. Better at attracting publicity than forecasting, he ...
Battered SPACs and Closed-End Funds Finally Look Tempting. How Investors Can Play Them.
With apologies to the Bard, SPACs are now in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, along with other excesses, such as meme stocks and nonfungible tokens. But some special purpose acquisition companies...
Stock Market Looks Poised to Rally as Bond Yield Falls
Text size Michael Nagle/Bloomberg The worst may be over for the stock market. Key equity indexes continued their autumn rally, and there could be more gains before the end of the year, helped by conti...
Where to Get Yields of 10% and Up, if You Can Stomach a Little Risk
The $280 billion convertibles sector is replete with 10%-plus yields on many issues. There is a risk in these high-yielders, but they can offer nice appreciation potential and a good alternative to th...
Fed Tightening Is Having More Impact Than You Might Think
We’ve learned a lot about the transmission of disease in the past few years. Ideas, good and bad, are spread similarly. Robert Shiller, the Yale University Nobel laureate, wrote in Irrational Exuberan...
It’s Been a Rough Year for Stocks and Bonds. What to Do in 2023.
With more than a month to go, 2022 is all but certain to go down as an annus horribilis for both stocks and bonds. The crucial question for investors: What does that portend for the year ahead? The re...
What the Stock Market and the Midterm Elections Have Common.
Investing and politics go together about as well as mango chutney and burned hair, and we prefer to focus on the stocks and leave the pontificating about the state of the nation to the Beltway pundits...
Higher Rates Hammer Home Buyers—and Make Mortgage REITs Lucrative for Investors
It’s instructive and often amusing to see how the popular media cover economic and financial news. You can get a handle on the public’s sentiment from how they treat those topics, which usually varies...
Don’t Expect the Stock Market to Rally, Even if GOP Wins Control of Congress
The outcome of the midterm elections on Nov. 8 could disappoint investors, regardless of which party they support. According to Wall Street lore, stocks usually perform strongly following the midterms...
Rising Markets Seem to See the Fed Easing. It’s Too Early for That.
What everybody knows isn’t worth knowing, according to market wisdom. The Federal Reserve will raise its key federal-funds target rate by 75 basis points this coming week, as we all know, from the cur...
Bulls Get Scorched by FedEx. Don’t Expect the Fed to Help.
Text size FedEx’s disappointing earnings and unexpectedly weak guidance were key factors in this past week’s stock market swoon. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg The stock market faces a doubly poisonous c...
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 ...
Fed Chief Talks Tough on Inflation. There’s More Pain Ahead for the Stock Market.
From left: Fed officials Jerome Powell, Lael Brainard, and John Williams ponder the great outdoors during a break at the economic symposium at Jackson Hole. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Text size Grand...
The Stock Market Couldn’t Handle the Uncertainty. It Better Learn How.
Text size It’s a market with big drops but big rips, as well, one that forces investors to accept low returns from index funds or try to take a more tactical approach. Michael Nagle/Bloomberg Call it ...
Oil Prices Have Been Falling. Why It’s Time to Buy Oil Stocks.
Text size Energy stock profits rose nearly 300% during the second quarter, nearly 10 times faster than the next sector, industrials. Oliver Bunic/Bloomberg It has been a boom-and-bust year for oil sto...
Ryan Cohen Dumped Bed Bath & Beyond Stock. Is the Meme Trade Over?
Text size Ryan Cohen sold his entire stake in Bed Bath & Beyond. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images So much for diamond hands. Ryan Cohen, meme stock cheerleader extraordinaire, just did something that ...
Generous Bond Yields Prove There Is an Alternative to Stocks
Return with us to ancient times, when dinosaurs ruled, at least in technology terms. It was early 2007, when Blackberries were in everybody’s mitts and the first iPhone hadn’t yet gone on sale, let al...