“So much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow / glazed with rain / water / beside the white /chickens.”   Well, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policy is a lot more complex than the simple tools mentioned in the oft-memorized William Carlos Williams’ poem, The Red Wheelbarrow, but an awful lot is […]

Robert Burns, father of fourteen and writer of Auld Lang Syne, once said, “There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.” Was he ever right!   Here are a few sure things: The Federal Reserve intends to reduce economic stimulus by tapering quantitative easing (QE).  Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke plans to retire. Gross Domestic […]

Like the kid who sings loudly and enthusiastically at a grade school concert while wary peers dodge his O Sole Mio arm sweeps, the Federal Reserve has been getting a lot of attention lately. That didn’t change last week.   Markets pulled back from record highs after Chicago Fed President, Charles Evans, who has been a […]

You say to-may-to. I say to-mah-to. You have to be a careful reader to keep up with the Federal Reserve these days. Last week, the Fed re-characterized the pace of economic growth in the United States from ‘moderate’ to ‘modest.’ According to Wall Street Journal blog, Real Time Economics, “economic data show that ‘modest’ is […]

If it’s not stocks, it’s bonds!  In a turnaround worthy of Bruce Willis in a ‘Die Hard’ movie, expectations for second quarter’s corporate earnings growth soared from below expectations, on average, in the previous week to beating expectations last week. Earnings growth estimates shot up to 4.1 percent which was a significant change from last […]

Singing the earnings song…  Each year, in January, April, July, and October, most publicly-traded companies announce their corporate earnings results. These announcements can have a dramatic effect on companies’ share prices – and markets – especially when companies don’t meet analysts’ expectations.  The way a company’s share price moves after an earnings announcement can strike […]

One of these things is not like the other… If you find yourself humming that old Sesame Street standard when you think about financial markets and world economies, you’re probably not alone.  To the consternation of many, the Dow Jones Industrials Average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rocketed to new highs last week […]