Research & News
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 »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Nuclear Blackmail (February 13, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady (N.B. Due to the upcoming President’s Day holiday, the next report will be published on Feb. 27th) During the 1950s, in the early days of nuclear weapons, there was much discussion about the potential for nuclear blackmail. The world had recently defeated fascism but the problem of an aggressive and amoral leader like… 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 »
Asset Allocation Weekly (February 10, 2017)
by Asset Allocation Committee For better or worse, the Federal Reserve tends to conduct policy based on some variant of the Taylor Rule, which essentially means that the FED sets the policy interest rate based upon changes in the inflation rate and the level of slack in the economy. The rule suggests that if there is… 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 »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Exit the Shark (February 6, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady On January 8, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died of a heart attack. The 82-year-old cleric was a major political figure in Iran and his passing is a significant event for Iran and the region. Analyses of history usually follow one of two lines—the “Great Man” or the “Great Wave.”[1] The former postulates that the… 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 »