Baseball great Yogi Berra once said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” He may have been on to something. Last May, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke introduced the idea the Fed's economic stimulus program, known as Quantitative Easing (QE), might be ratcheted down sooner rather than later. The […]
Confluences are the building blocks of the world’s waterways. When two or more rivers meet, changes in velocity and turbulence tend to result in geologic scouring; erosive activity that may alter the shape of the river and its bed. The action may produce a ‘scour hole’ downstream from the confluence. For a river runner, a […]
Last week was crunch time in the National Football League (NFL). With the 2013 regular season approaching rapidly, NFL teams cut about 700 players from their rosters over the Labor Day weekend. That was a big cut—about a 40 percent drop in player employment—as rosters were pared from 90 to 53 players. However, it’s not […]
“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 […]