Daily Comment
Daily Comment (February 14, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EST] Happy Valentine’s Day! For a mostly quiet market day there is a lot of news to digest. Let’s get started! Flynn out: Yesterday, when Kellyanne Conway suggested that National Security Director Flynn had the full support of the president, we suspected he was doomed. … Read More »
Daily Comment (February 13, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EST] On Friday, Fed Governor Tarullo announced his retirement. Although his term ran until 2020, there was growing speculation he would leave. He has undertaken the role of lead regulator, a position that Dodd-Frank created but was never filled. It was expected that President Trump… Read More »
Daily Comment (February 10, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EST] Yesterday’s market action was a good example of what we expect to see at least through the summer. As we have noted since the election, President Trump needs to manage two constituencies, the right-wing populists (RWP) and right-wing establishment (RWE). Although there is some… Read More »
Daily Comment (February 9, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EST] One of the political factors we watch with a new president is the management of political capital. Political capital is essentially the goodwill, the mandate, which comes from winning an election. Although not a hard and fast figure, it does appear to exist, can… Read More »
Daily Comment (February 8, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EST] Although U.S. equity markets have been generally moving sideways for the past couple of weeks, there have been some interesting developments. Here are a few items of note: Greece should leave the Eurozone: In its latest report on Greece, the IMF displayed this sobering… Read More »
Daily Comment (February 7, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EST] We are seeing the dollar rise this morning along with U.S. equity futures. There isn’t a lot of news to indicate a reason for the rise in the greenback. Perhaps the best explanation is that the drop we have seen in the dollar over… Read More »
Daily Comment (February 6, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EST] It was a mostly quiet weekend, at least quiet based on the standards of the new administration. Super Bowl weekend has become something of a national holiday in the U.S. and last night’s game was one for the ages. So, even with injunctions and… Read More »
Daily Comment (February 3, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EST] It’s employment Friday! We have a plethora of charts below but, in short, the report was rather mixed. The payroll survey was surprisingly robust, rising 227k compared to expectations of +180k. Wages were soft, with yearly average earnings rising 2.5%, less than the 2.7%… Read More »
Daily Comment (February 2, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EST] There’s a lot going on this Groundhog Day,[1] so let’s get started: The Fed: The FOMC meeting was a clear non-event. Almost none of the language changed and the new committee didn’t give us any hints that it is prepared to raise rates any… Read More »